The Fan Soundtrack Project

[HALLOWEEN] [VIDEO GAMES] [DEAD SPACE] Waiting To Begin

dizy_chan — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:30:52 GMT

Dead Space is a game that has the hero, Isaac Clarke, going up against a horde of creatures called ~~space zombies~~ Necromorphs. Made up of the reanimated crew of the USG Ishimura, they spread quickly and often have a habit of finding messy, yet creative ways to dismember him.

Issac's goal is to save Nicole, his ex-girlfriend, and get off of the Ishimura, but when every corner and shadow holds a threat, how can he expect to survive?

This is where the Plasma Cutter comes in. And a really sturdy set of boots.

1. Recoil- Black Box Pt. 1

When we got closer, the pilot said there was something on the radar that he hadn't seen the day before

2. VNV Nation- Second Skin (spoken)

Your hope becomes your second skin
To envelop and protect you
The joys were never undeserved
The greatness hid no doubt

So much that you denied yourself
And so much that you never knew

3. Ego Likeness- Second Skin

I have been silent so long
Under tightly knitted skin
Waiting to begin here
Waiting to begin

I have been bleeding so long
In this ancient second skin
Trying to begin

4. Wumpscut- Don't Go

Don't tell me you would die for my reality
Don't tell me I would live in wild insanity

I don't want you to go
I don't want you to go don't go

5. Nine Inch Nails- Happiness In Slavery (remixed by Trent Reznor, Chris Vrenna, & PK)

Slavery

6. Dismantled- The Swarm

They all grind on
My own internals scream that I won't fit their mold
But they're so self-sufficient
They're bred so well

They've all just stalled
Their eyes all upon me
Waiting to swarm
Now I'm a self-sufficient
I've built myself well
But they will never swarm,
Oh they will never swarm

7. Stabbing Westward- Falls Apart (Powdered Cat Remix)

I'm finding it so hard to hold on

This is where it falls apart
This is where it falls apart
I feel helpless as my everything comes
Crashing down on me

8. Velvet Acid Christ- Fun With Knives

Cutting through flesh with a rusty knife
Neurotic psychotic waves in your mind
Sheering open wounds with bloody, rusty knife

Blood, guts, fun with knives

Die for me, and i'll die for you
Won't you die for me?
And i'll die for you

9. Recoil- Black Box Pt. 2

I got really afraid.
My heart missed a beat.
I felt this had already happened but I was about to see it again...

10. Radiohead- All I Need

You are all I need
You're all I need
I'm in the middle of your picture
Lying in the reeds

Bonus Track: David Bowie- Space Oddity

Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?

“Here am I floating round my tin can
Far above the moon
Planet earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do”

Zip File (Sendspace)

Texture copyright of Princess of Shadows.

[ANYTHING GOES] [GAMES] WARCRAFT III: Eternity's End

cephiedvariable — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:44:33 GMT

For those of your familiar with World of Warcraft but not the original games, here is what makes WCIII so different from WCI and WCII: while the first two games were all about why Orcs and Humans hate each other, WCIII is why everyone hates each other. It's also about why they shouldn't because, really, considering all the shit the various races went through together in this game, everyone should be BFF by now

This game is also relentlessly sad. Even more so, since it ends on a note of hope that is quickly quashed out by subsequent entires in the series. But all in all it is a challenging game with a beautiful story and a ridiculously engaging cast. Even if nothing good ever happens to any of them.

1. The Dream [Galadriel's Mirror - David Arkenstone]
Young leader of the Orcish Horde, Warchief Thrall, awakens from a dream of death and destruction. Following the words of a mysterious prophet in the form of a Raven, he agrees to lead his people West over the sea to the strange and savage continent of Kalimdor.

2. Pride Cometh Before the Fall [Fallen's Grave - Altered Beast OC Remix]
The human King of Lordaeran receives the same warning but in their arrogance, the humans refuse to heed the Prophet's words.

3. Prince Arthas Menethil [Titans - Vangelis]
This guy is ostensibly our hero for the first stretch of the game. He is handsome, brave and clever. He has a bright future ahead of him and all that. Watch him as he destroys his soul and becomes one of the most evil beings in the history of Azeroth.

4. The Plague [Resurrection - Koh Otani]
Arthas and his men discover a horrible plague that turns the living into shambling, rotting, mindless monsters tearing through the countryside. Desperate to protect his people, the young Prince rushes from town to town attempting to stop the spread of the disease.

5. The Culling of Stratholme [La Foire - Angelo Badalamenti]
Defeated at every turn and determined to make things "right", Arthas orders the city of Stratholme burned and its citizens killed- whether they are infected by the Plague or not.

6. Betrayer of the Light [Cathedral - Ragnarok Online]
"Betrayer of the Light!" is something Arthas shouts in battle if you make his unit attack something directly. He continues to shout this during his journey into the cold, dead land of Northrend where he intends to take "revenge" on the Dreadlord Mal'Gainas for the fate of Stratholme (yeah, okay, Arthas. As if that mission wasn't a race to see which one of you could slaughter villagers faster). This is ironic considering that while he is in Northrend...

7. The Path of the Righteous [Unintentional Descension - Fabian del Priore]
... Arthas (indirectly) murders one of his mentors- Muradin Bronzebeard (adorkable younger brother of the Dwarven King)- then betrays his own men and sells his soul to kill Mal'Gainas. Soulless and brought down to his lowest...

8. Arthas, Servant of the Lich King [This Moment is Eternity - Nightwish]
Day possesses no key here
Where moon sheds the cold twilight
This moment is eternity
... Arthas becomes a Death Knight under the control of the Lich King. Unfettered by the weight of his crown, he goes home and murders his father in a really pretty cutscence.

9. The March of the Scourge [The Greatest Trick - John Ottoman]
And so the Kingdom of Lordaeron begins it's decay at the hands of the undead.

10. Sylvanas Windrunner [The Secrecy of Deep Affection - Gustaf Grefberg]
Sylvanas is in charge of the elven offensive against the Scourge. Like most people who try to be heroic in Warcraft, she meets a pretty terrible end: murdered at the hands of the undead, she is turned into one of them. Don't worry! She gets her sentience back eventually and emerges as the leader of the Forsaken! Though that in itself isn't exactly a pleasant fate either.

11. The Defense of Silvermoon [Knight's March - Hans Zimmer]
SPOILER: it fails.

12. Fall of Lordaeran [The Battle of Dragons - Erdenstern]
And the Prophet is all: WHY. DIDN'T. YOU. LISTEN. TO. ME. Arthas murders his other mentor, Uther the Lightbringer.

13. The Northern Kingdoms Burn [Unknown Track - Unknown Artst]
As it turns out, the Scourge Invasion was set into motion in order to pave the way for the Burning Legion: millennia old demons who destroy worlds to return the universe to a state of chaos. Arthas is all: "If I had a soul, this revelation might have caused me to totally freak out."

And seriously, I have no clue what this song is or what it is from. I downloaded in in eighth grade under the description of "Cloud's Theme", but I can tell you: this is NOT from Final Fantasy VII. If any of you could identify the track, that would be so awesome I don't even know where to begin.

14. The Reign of the Burning Legion [Deciever of Fools - Within Temptation]

DOWNLOAD

15. Exodus [Musa Venit Carmine - Medieval Baebes]
Because orcs are apparently much smarter than humans (seriously?), they cross the ocean hoping to find themselves a real home at last.

16. Kalimdor [Cantara - Dead Can Dance]
Kalimdor is... different than the Eastern Kingdoms. Wild, expansive and untamed. It's also very pretty and filled with red rock, tropical plants and glowing forests.

17. Thrall, son of Durotan [Where My Heart Is - Knights of Honor]
Look, there's a reason that Thrall is pretty much the only faction leader in WoW that players will put themselves on the line to defend from raids with the kind of devoted fervor Blizzard likely expected when they instituted the mechanic. I admit to slight Alliance preference, but if given the chance, I would elect Thrall PRESIDENT OF AZEROTH. Mostly, he's incredibly awesome. I guess you could say in the context of WCIII, Thrall is the narrative juxtaposition to Arthas: the young Prince's life of privilege and exposure to goodness and kindness could not prevent him from walking a dark path, whereas the cruelty Thrall faced in his life taught him mercy and all his hardships have made him noble and a measured leader.

18. The Tauren [The Sun Circle - David Arkenstone]
While it sucks to be pretty much anyone on Azeroth, it especially sucks to be the Tauren. It seems that every other race on the continent of Kalimdor wants them dead and all they want to do is live in peace and be at one with the Earth Mother. Thrall meets the elderly Tauren Chief, Cairne Bloodhoof (who says adorable old man things when you click on him in battle ♥) and helps him defend his tribe. The two forge a deep friendship that eventually leads to the Tauren joining the Horde.

19. Bloodlust [Varekai - Cirque de Soleil]
On Kalimdor and close to the returned Dreadlords of the Burning Legion, Grom Hellscream- mentor and surrogate brother to Thrall- begins to feel his old Orcish bloodlust returning and does some foolish things. Like...

20. To Slay a Demigod [Drums of Gaugamela - Vangelis]
... killing the Night Elf God Cenarius. This alone might explain why the Night Elves sided specifically with the Alliance after this war even though they were pretty much on equal standing with the humans and the orcs by the end of this game. (Maybe I'm alone in this, but I tend to think that the Night Elves have quite a bit in common with the Horde, especially the Tauren. But since the addition of Blood Elves to WoW, that makes a nice contrast: the Horde gets the elves that seem to fit more naturally culture wise into the Alliance while the Alliance gets the wild, feral elves who might have- under different circumstances- been at home with the Horde. Blah blah, I'll shut up now. The point is, Thrall's BFF killed their God so that wasn't happening).

21. The Oracle at Stonetalon [Demon's Castle - Wild ARMS]
Cairne Bloodhoof takes Thrall up to Stonetalon Peak to see the Oracle there. They have to fight their way through human forces and in the depths of the dead, forgotten cave they meet...

22. Jaina Proudmoore [Sur Le Fil - Yann Tiersan]
... this lovely sorceress, who was the only member of the Lordaeron nobility smart enough to listen to the Prophet and pay attention to the decimation the Scourge were bringing to the land. She decided to take her people across the sea and, like, not become a zombie. She is initially hostile to the Orc and Tauren leaders, but the Prophet shows up and bades them work together because ~~like the rest of the fandom, he totes ships Thrall/Jaina~~ without each other, they will fall.

23. Mammaroth's Curse [Do You Think I'm Saxon? - Hans Zimmer]
It turns out that Grom has given his soul to the Dreadlord who originally turned the Orcs into killing machines. Jaina helps Thrall save his best friend's soul but then Grom dies killing the monstrous Mammaroth. Thrall is all: D:, but considering EVERYTHING HE LOVES DIES he should have seen this coming.

24. The Night Elves' Distrust [Riders from the East - Erdenstern]
So Thrall and Jaina forge a happy alliance and for the first time ever, Orcs and Humans join hands in the clear cutting of a really pretty forest. The Night Elves like their forest with all its trees in it so they begin attacking the "outlanders".

25. Tyrande Whisperwind [Avarice - Hans Zimmer]
The High Priestess of the Night Elves is generally a tempered, reasonable person but her people have been hidden for tens of thousands of years. She knows that Burning Legion is back, she knows that her forest is being harmed and she knows that the outlanders killed her people's Gods. Tyrande will do what it takes to protect Azeroth as her people have done in the past.

26. Waking the Druids [Miracula Aetermitatis - Cirque de Soleil]
The Night Elves know that what's happening is real srs bzns, so they wake their most powerful druids- who have been sleeping for a thousand years. Tyrande also wakes and frees her lover's creepy, unhinged brother, Illidan Stormrage, but considering his plot is mostly important in regards to the WCIII expansion, The Frozen Throne, I'm not going to talk about him much here. Except that he is crazy and unhinged and does some stupid shit that gets him banned from Night Elf society. ~~And like most Warcraft characters who do stupid shit, this also makes him into a fucking demigod. Lol, Warcraft.~~

27. Twilight of the Gods [Invasion - Erdenstern]
The Dreadlord Archimonde approaches the World Tree, hoping to drain Azeroth's energy essentially... killing the planet or something. Okay, listen: Warcraft lore is really confusing and I beat the game at three in the morning all frantic, twitchy and bleary eyed.

28. Enemies Stand Together at the End [The Opened Way - Koh Otani]
This final battle is some intense shit. Jaina, Thrall and Cairne attempt to stall Archimode's ascent towards the World Tree while the Night Elves back them up and hatch a plan to destroy the Burning Legionnaire...

29. The Sacrifice of Ancients [Isfahan - ES Posthumus]
... in the end, sacrificing their immortality. The World Tree is dead, Azeroth is deeply scarred and its people have learned that there are evils in the world beyond their petty wars. Human, Dwarf, Orc, Troll, Tauren and Elf stand together under the shadow of the dead tree as a new root digs into the burnt earth, perhaps signifying a new future for the people of this deeply harmed planet.

~~SPOILER: they fuck it up pretty quickly.~~

DOWNLOAD

[Books][Animorphs][The Invincible]

threepwillow — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:54:05 GMT

We can't tell you who we are. Or where we live. It's too risky, and we've got to be careful. Really careful. So we don't trust anyone. Because if they find us . . . well, we just won't let them find us.

The thing you should know is that everyone is in really big trouble. Yeah. Even you.

I grew up in the nineties. Some kids read Goosebumps, some kids read Babysitters' Club, and we all started reading Harry Potter, but what I read more than anything else was Animorphs, the ridiculously long series about five human kids who are given the power to transform into any animal they can touch for two hours, with the horrible Spider-Man-esque "great responsibility" that oh yeah, they have to save the world from mind-controlling alien slugs. No biggie, right?

Eleven and a half years after Animorphs was first ever published, I have just finished reading every single one in order – that's 54 regular books, 4 Megamorphs, and 4 external "chronicles" books that tie into the back story – for the second time in my life. Delightfully, this coincided with fst's free-for-all January, and this FST, which I've been sitting on for several months, can finally see some daylight. Some of you may remember my ridiculous Ouran FST, in which there was regretfully no Mori; in this Animorphs FST there is regretfully no Ax, or at least no Ax by himself, because there weren't really songs that matched a four-legged, four-eyed, blue-furred, Cinnabon-guzzling alien The Young And The Restless fanboy. (Which is not to say that I didn't at least try a little.) And as a child of the nineties, the period in my life that Animorphs will forever be connected to, I leaned also in that direction as far as most of the music goes. When Marco is popping off Spice Girls references left and right and the Goo Goo Dolls song is, uh, canon, it's pretty hard not to. So don't think that this reflects my actual music tastes. ~~Except that it totally does. Too much Hanson? Never!~~

Enjoy the nostalgia. It's all in your hands.

01. Invincible - Pat Benatar

"Just tell them we're Animorphs."

"Tell them we're what?" Rachel asked.

"Idiot teenagers with a death wish," Marco said.

"Animorphs. " I tried the word out. It sounded okay. (Marco, Rachel, and Jake, "The Invasion")

we can't afford to be innocent
stand up and face the enemy
it's a do-or-die situation
we will be invincible

02. 16 is Dying - Stutter

In the middle of it all, the Animorphs are still teenagers, and when it boils down to it, they'd probably be angsting even if the fate of the human race didn't rest on their ill-prepared shoulders.

parents are screaming
there's no room for breathing
stuck inside a world that you hate
a freak show in slo-mo, let's go

03. Creepy Crawling - Chumbawamba

A song for the Yeerks themselves, as well as all the other totally disgusting and completely brilliant alien races K. A. Applegate has given us.

all the creeps go creepy crawling
same thing every night
how can stealing candy from a baby seem all right?

04. Real World - Matchbox 20 (Jake)

I'm the leader of the Animorphs. I don't know how that happened. It was some doom pronounced by Marco. Why me? Because, Marco said. Because it has to be. (Jake, "Megamorphs 4: Back to Before")

I wonder what it's like to be the head honcho
I wonder what I'd do if they all did just what I said

05. Shopping - Barenaked Ladies (Rachel)

"Mall knowledge. It's going to be my major in college." (Rachel, "The Exposed")

it's never enough
until you've got all the stuff
when the going gets rough
just shop with somebody tough

06. Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely - Backstreet Boys (Tobias and His Angst)

<Rachel...I don't even remember what I looked like.> (Tobias, "The Encounter")

life goes on, as it never ends
eyes of stone observe the trends
they never say, forever gaze

07. Violence - Bif Naked (Cassie)

"There's something else, isn't there?" I asked the Drode.

The Drode laughed. "Oh, yes. There is something else, little Cassie. Cassie the killer with a conscience. Kill 'em, then cry over 'em. That's our Cassie." (Cassie and the Drode, "Megamorphs 3: Elfangor's Secret")

we must all understand
violence lies
it's not about me, it's not about you
it's about life

08. Humor of the Situation - Barenaked Ladies (Marco)

I didn't want their pity. I still don't. I'm a joker. I'm a comedian. That's how I deal with life. See, I've always believed that to some extent you get to decide for yourself what your life will be like. You can either look at the world and say, "Oh, isn't it all so tragic, so grim, so awful." Or you can look at the world and decide that it's mostly funny. (Marco, "The Escape")

come on now now
come on now now
enjoy the humor of the situation

09. Cosmonaut - Hennessey

Because Animorphs, in addition to being about teenage angst, is actually still about aliens and intergalactic wars and stuff.

fitful visions of futures
thick smoke and trees
they all but set their hounds on me
I'm some king, saviour of all things
a spaceman gone too far

10. O Green World - Gorillaz

When it gets down to the line, the Animorphs aren’t just fighting for the human race, but for the whole goddamn planet, when their supposed Andalite "allies" write them off as too far gone.

o green world
don't desert me now
bring me back to fallen town
where someone's still alive
fighting for something new in this

11. Hit The Wall - Bluprint

The Animorphs pick up a handful of allies in their fight – be they the helpful but frustratingly nonviolent Chee androids, the rare and excellent rebel Yeerk, or the traitorous seventh Animorph David. A song for the allies, whether they stayed that way or not.

and we pull back just before you hit the wall
after running free for so long, will you be content just to crawl?
and at that point, is it going to matter if anybody lives?
I'll only know that something has to give, something has to give

12. Fire Escape - Fastball (Jake/Cassie when it's good)
13. River - Hanson (Jake/Cassie when it's not)

Cassie jumped into my arms and I wrapped her up tight and before I knew it I was kissing her on her lips and she was kissing me back.

"It's about time," Rachel grumbled. (Jake and Rachel, "The Attack")

///

"You know I love you."

"I love you, too, Jake," she said, and put her head on my shoulder.

"I guess if we win, if we survive, maybe we should, you know, get married and all. I mean, eventually. I know we're young, but man, we've been through enough that it should count for a few extra years, shouldn't it?"

I don't know what I expected her answer to be, but I didn't expect her to start crying. And not tears of joy, either.

"I would like that...eventually," she said.

"But. But what?"

She sighed. "But, Jake, what are you going to be? What are you going to do?" (Jake and Cassie, "The Answer")

I'll be the rain falling on your fire escape
and I may not be the man you want me to
I can be myself, how about you?
///
people say that we're sweethearts
they say nothing in the world can tear us apart
well I don't know about you
but this thing we're going through is tearing me in two

14. Iris - Goo Goo Dolls (Tobias/Rachel when it's emo)
15. Thinking of You - Hanson (Tobias/Rachel when it's not)

"Just dance with me, Tobias. Please." A slow song started. I was surprised. I actually knew this one. Goo Goo Dolls. Couples filled up the dance floor. Cassie and Jake were on the other side of the gym, swaying gently, arms around each other.

Rachel reached out and took my hand. (Tobias and Rachel, "The Illusion")

///

"What am I supposed to do, Tobias? I'm a girl. You're a bird. This is past Romeo and Juliet, Montagues and Capulets. This isn't Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio coming from different social groups or whatever. It's not like you're black and I'm white like Cassie and Jake. No one but a moron cares about that. We are...we can't hold hands, Tobias. We can't dance. We can't go to a movie together."

<I....God, Rachel, don't you think I know all that? Don't you think I want to have all that? But I can't keep changing. I can't keep becoming something different.>

"One more change, Tobias. Back to human. You'd be free of this stupid war and free of all the danger of living as a hawk. I wouldn't have to worry about you anymore." (Rachel and Tobias, "The Pretender")

and I'd give up forever to touch you
'cause I know that you feel me somehow
you're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
and I don't wanna go home right now
///
fly with the wings of an eagle
glide along with the wind
no matter how high
I'll be thinking of you the whole time

16. Lie Detector Test - Bis
The scariest thing about the Yeerks is that they can be anyone: your local news anchor, the mall rent-a-cops, your assistant principal, your brother, your mom.

what if your friends were lying to you
would you see through the reason or think it was true?

17. Good Guys - Aqua
The scariest thing about a war is that even the good guys have to do things that give them nightmares.

you dream a dream
mmm, but you never wake up
you're so afraid
mmm, but the dream is over

18. Invincible - Muse

The six of us together in morph can take on anything, I told myself. We can take on anything. (Jake, "The Attack")

during the struggle they will pull us down
but please, please let's use this chance to turn things around
and tonight we can truly say together we're invincible

Acquire the whole FST at sendspace or mediafire.

Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. ♥

[game] Tsukihime

asrimal — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:35:51 GMT

This is the first FST I've made. Type Moon's Tsukihime is a visual novel game written by Kinoko Nasu. The game is about Tohno Shiki, an otherwise normal young man who after his biological father's death moves back to the mansion he grew up in. Eventually he encounters a woman named Arcueid Brunestud, a vampire who introduces Shiki to what may very well be what he's meant to do with life.

Tohno Shiki
Mental by Courtney Jaye
It took so long for me to recognize
All this confidence that I couldn't find
I used to dim my light so you could shine
And that's what hurts
It really hurts

Near Side of the Moon

Arcueid Brunestud
Fields of Gold by Eva Cassidy
You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Among the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold

Ciel
Lost Heaven by L'Arc~en~Ciel
We're saying goodbye, Lost Heaven.
How we longed for Heaven.
We're letting go of something we never had.
Time goes so fast, Heaven is lost.

Far Side of the Moon

Tohno Akiha
This Fire by Franz Ferdinand
Eyes
Boring a way through me
Paralyse
Controlling completely
Now
There is a fire in me
A fire that burns

Hisui
Maid by Matt Nathanson
My ears are always open to your laments
and my will is always weak for your advances,
and I'll play the maid and clean up the mess

Kohaku
I Can't Decide by Scissor Sisters
Oh I could throw you in the lake
Or feed you poisoned birthday cake
I wont deny I'm gonna miss you when you're gone
Oh I could bury you alive
But you might crawl out with a knife
And kill me when I'm sleeping

Antagonists

Nero Chaos
The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden
Woe to You Oh Earth and Sea
for the Devil sends the beast with wrath
because he knows the time is short
Let him who hath understanding
reckon the number of the beast
for it is a human number
its number six hundred and sixty six

Michael Roa Valdermung
Rose of Pain by X Japan
Why are you scared?
What have you seen?
In the castle with the silent roses
I ask again and again
Why are you sad?
What pain are you feeling?
Oh, I ask of the rose with its petals of blood
But the rose of blood can't answer me till the end

Tohno SHIKI
Darkshines by Muse
Passing by, you light up my darkest skies
You'll take only seconds to draw me in
So be mine and your innocence
I will consume

Side Characters

Arihiko Inui
Average Man by Reel Big Fish
I just became a member of a club known as the bumbling fools
Botching the game and the best things in life is the motto and the rule
So if you can open up your heart and hear me out just for tonight
Baby I got something to prove to you
I've gotta show you I can do it right

Yumizuka Satsuki
Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps by Cake
You won't admit you love me.
And so how am I ever to know?
You only tell me
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Relationships

Shiki/Anyone
One Headlight by The Wallflowers
So long ago, I don't remember when
That's when they say I lost my only friend
Well they said she died easy of a broken heart disease
As I listened through the cemetery trees

Entire FST
Tsukihime FST

[TRIOS] [COMICS] [PREACHER] 'Man Bites God' (Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy)

cephiedvariable — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:36:02 GMT

Warning: lots of psuedo-western music, irish punk and former velvet underground members below the cut.

Preacher is one of those comics the men at the local hobby shop wouldn't sell you when you were in elementary school. Written by the (in)famous Garth Ennis, with art by the fabulous sequential artist Steve Dillion, Preacher was a twisted, blasphemous, curse-filled bloodbath that ran under DC's Vertigo Imprint from 1995-2000. However, underneath all of the sex and deformity and head-shots, Preacher is actually a very lovely story that puts more emphasis on interpersonal relationships than action. This FST explores the relationship between protagionist Jesse Carter and his star crossed love, Tulip, as well as Jesse and Tulip's tumultuous friendship with the vampire, Cassidy.

{1} Sweet Jane - Cowboy Junkies
Once upon a time an adventerous tomboy by the name of Tulip O'Hare met young runaway Jesse Custer in a bar and they fell in mad, rollicking, car-theft love. Then Jesse left without a word and Tulip spent five years honing her bitterness. They're reunited by chance, divine providence and with the help of-

{2) Wanderlust - Flogging Molly
- a druken, Irish vampire named Proinsias Cassidy. You know the sort- he's been everywhere, he knows everyone. Jesse and Cass are quick friends, but Tulip can never really shake the feeling that too much of Cassidy's myth is self created.

(3) Man Bites God - Drew Bunting
Meanwhile, during his five year abscence, good ol' Jesse had become a good ol' Reverend- a Reverened with a power to challenge the heavens residing (quite literally) in his body. He's on a journey to find God and... uh, like. Punch him in the face or something. For various complicated reasons. So the mismatched trio sets forth on their Grand American Quest, and although no one is quite sure yet that they're getting along, everyone's pretty certain that that God dude is going down.

{4) The Ship Song - Nick Cave
With the "help" (ha ha) of Jesse's family, he and Tulip get it back together. They're kind of totally epic.

{5} London Calling - The Clash
It's a common problem on road trips- no one can agree on what kind of music is appropiate. Cass is a relic from the past-

(6) Hunk of Burning Love - Elvis Presley
- Jesse is a painfully typical southern boy-

{7} 9mm Goes Bang - Boogie Down Productions
- and Tulip is... well, Tulip is Tulip.

{8) Flashdance (What a Feeling) - Kim Carnes
What? It's canon!

{9) Streets of Fire - Bruce Springsteen
All is well and good until Jesse falls out of a plane and is assumed dead.

{10} The Sun Never Shines on Closed Doors - Flogging Molly
For six months after his near-death experience, Jesse does cool things like find his lost mother and save an entire town.

{11} The Lying Song - John Cale
Unfortunately, on the flip side, Tulip and Cass descend into an unhealthy, drug-frought and not entirely consensual sexual relationship. Tulip eventually shoots Cassidy in the chest.

{12} Lost Highway - Townes Van Zandt
Really, Cass is kind of a deplorable scum-bag. Kind of really, yuck, ew and all that. Except it's still hard not to feel a little sympathetic for him. On top of it all, he's also really that pathetic.

{13) Gravel Drive - John Cale
Jesse and Tulip are reuinted again. Jesse prepares for his final confrontation with God.

{14} The Desert is on Fire - Murder by Death
The climax of the story! Plans are hatched and crushed, main characters are shot in the face, Tulip brings down the main villain in, like, three panels! Jesse beats up Cassidy outside a bar because men are like that and Cassidy commits suicide without bothering to mention that he cut a deal with God to assure Jesse's survival. Redemption? Not exactly, but it's getting there.

{15} Five Days in May - Blue Rodeo
Jesse and Tulip ride off into the sunset together with the intention of loving each other until the stars go black (Garth Ennis' words, not mine!)

ZIP.

[3][Book][Harry Potter] Lupin Black and Tonks: This Is All You See

threepwillow — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 06:03:11 GMT

Behind the cut lie spoilers and speculations.

Lupin Black and Tonks: This Is All You See

Maybe you believe in Remus/Sirius. Maybe you believe in Remus/Tonks. Maybe I believe in both. All around there are moments we missed in reading the books: the Marauders' childhood, the non-kid-friendly version of Sirius's ordeals in Azkaban, what may have happened down the road had any of them lived - lonely hearts pining for lonely hearts. Questions that have been left unanswered and gaps that have been left unfilled.

Maybe I believe in filling in gaps.

x Your Thesaurus Won't Help You Now - Paper Moon

We never saw Remus's initial confession to Sirius, and the way he labored over each and every syllable, not quite knowing how to say I think I'm in love with you and you do fancy boys, don't you in the same breath.

and now the ultimatum has been given and I find myself so unprepared
to spill emotions that have remained undeclared

x Intermittently - Barenaked Ladies

We never saw Sirius's fall from grace into love with Remus, and the thousands of different forms of denial he was in before he landed on the truth.

she's a lot like you but she don't look like you
okay she's not you but she'll do fine
I put my life on hold to avoid confrontation
or should I tell you to your face and risk my hide?

x We Are The New Black - Tremolo

We never saw Sirius not running away from his ridiculous household so much as to a place where the Marauders were eternal and where he could make Remus howl in all new ways.

We are the music of the streets, the style that goes unseen
a different way to be, friends with enemies
look that never ends, love is the new trend
we are the new black, we're the new black
ah-ah-ah-ooooooo

x Blue - Angie Hart

We never saw Remus's worst nights of lycanthropy, and his desperation just to make it through the night when James was gone with Lily and no one could quite find Peter, could they, and Sirius was all he had.

I fell into the moon
and it covered you in blue
I fell into the moon
can I make it right, can I spend the night?

x Home With Me - Nathan

We never saw the way Remus struggled with the law - and with his own heart - when he realized that he was the last person left alive who believed that Sirius was innocent.

I bet you have the kind of eyes crinkled up at the edges, a secret map
trails etched in skin, situations you've been in (though it never got quite this dramatic)
bandwagon landslide down a pile growing higher
and the worst thing is the first thing we believe

x History of Punctuation - Paper Moon

We never saw the dozens of letters that Remus wrote to Sirius while he was gone, attempting to say in prose what he knew he could never say in speech, which was that he just could not do this any more; and unfortunately, neither did Sirius.

third person has become the easiest role to take
unconquerable and virtuous, accepting of it all
watching it all from the length of your arms
separates the pen from your life, your friends from your fall
your pleading intentions are ignored without resolve
building together runs on and on and on
the last time we spoke was marked up with hope
then you reappeared; the silence indicates the end

x The Play - Iris

We never saw Tonks's first confession of love to Remus, back before his excuse was "you deserve better," back when his excuse was "I deserve worse."

he sees her now
she wanders up to him with an innocence that he knows
deep inside, and nothing shows
there's something 'bout the way she opens up her palm

x Revolving Dora - Fountains of Wayne

We never saw it coming, the precise moment at which Remus learned he loved (though perhaps was not in love) with Nymphadora Tonks; and unfortunately, neither did Remus.

and she's turning out to be
immune to gravity
she's a lot like you; not much like me

x Back In Your Head - Tegan & Sara

We never saw - and never got to see - the day that Tonks woke up, went to feed the baby, got back to the bed, and didn't recognize the man beside her as the one she married.

build a wall of books between us in our bed
repeat, repeat the words that I know we both have said
relax into the need, we get so comfortable
remember when I was so strange and likeable?
I just want back in your head

x Shoe Box - Barenaked Ladies

We never saw what's left over in the last box they pulled out of 12 Grimmauld Place before they burned it to the ground, the box even Kreacher wouldn't dare to touch, the box that James Sirius Potter and Theodore Remus Lupin almost wished had burned along with the house after they looked through what was inside it.

was it something I said or was it something you read
that's making you think that I should never have come here?
I can offer you lies, I can tell you goodbye
I can tell you I'm sorry, but I can't tell the truth, dear

xxx every maybe if and what about a bit of give a shred of doubt? (full zip)

[Not Quite Human] [Manga: Angel Sanctuary] [Cruel Angel's Thesis: A Rosiel FST]

mistressnaoko — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 03:42:35 GMT

Angel Sanctuary by Kaori Yuki, is another story about the War between Heaven and Hell. What makes it unique are the characters and the fact that all are them aren't just drool-worthy bishies, but that all of them are well-developed, even characters you see only once in a while (the random lab tech the main character takes hostage comes to mind). The story revolves around reviving Alexiel, one of the two twins of Adam Kadmon, considered to be the first angel.

This FST is dedicated to her twin, Rosiel. Called the Inorganic Angel, he was an angel born of as a mound of cables and flesh. Literally cables and flesh. To keep them separate, God decided to drive a wedge between the two, as if they combined, their powers could destroy him. Rosiel is doubly cursed, for as he grows older his cells cannot take it and he's driven to insanity. His aim is to merge with his sister so that he could regain his youth, as Alexiel, the Organic Angel, can regrow any part of her body if she's wounded. Rosiel isn't as shallow as he sounds though. The phrase tortured genius comes to mind when his schemes are revealed. Rosiel is cruel, sometimes excessively so. However, he does have one thing that he loves.

Katan was the only angel who spoke to him truthfully when he (Katan) was a child, and still does so. When Rosiel kills Katan at God's prompting, he goes insane. It's quite sad and pathetic. Pick up the series. It's worth it, trust me.

Have fun listening! The songs are a mix of English, Japanese, and some instrumentals/opera.

Hear Our Prayer - Tsubasa Chronicles

Rosiel is one of the Angels of God who stand in his presence. In fact, he's the one God apparently loves the most, being called to his presence many times. One of the earliest images we see of Rosiel is him at God's feet, head on his lap and God's hand on his head.

No one is glamorously lonely
All by themselves

The Unloved- Backstreet Boys

Rosiel does not look lonely because he's always surrounded by people, but most of them are his puppets. Those who consume a feather of his will become slaves to him and so Rosiel is lonely though he's surrounded by people. The only one who sees it is Katan. Add to that that he seems to be loved only by God, and this song becomes more poignant.

Sleeping for a long time
in the cradle of my love

Cruel Angel's Thesis- Evagelion
I included this song mainly for the title, but the above describes the time when Rosiel was first born. Unlike Alexiel who could move immediately, Rosiel was confined to a tank for some time, until she made an agreement with God not to tell Rosiel that she loves him in return for her twin having a body. Alexiel loved her brother even then.

Why should I just depend on myself and pretend I'll find something greater
When I know I can look at the bright side and find the Creator

You in Me- Juwita Suwito
In Angel Sanctuary, trusting in God is a dangerous thing, for if you depend on him, he will lead you astray and make you murder the ones you love to unleash destruction for everyone. Of course, Rosiel doesn't see it that way. Refers primarily to the first confrontation between Setsuna and Rosiel in God's chamber where Rosiel kills Katan.

When you smile at me you know exactly what you do
Everything- Michael Buble

Rosiel knows exactly what he does when he smiles at someone. He's also Everything to those who eat his feathers, as they become his slaves and cannot survive without his blood.

Who is that girl I see
Staring straight back at me?

Reflection- Christina Aguilera
As the series progresses, Rosiel begins to change himself to look more and more like his sister, Alexiel. This change is deliberate, as he thinks that people love Alexiel more than him. Not exactly healthy now, is it?

You've got to attack (ALL-OUT ATTACK) you've got to make up your mind (ALL-OUT ATTACK)
That time will come whether you want it to or not

All-Out Attack- B'z
When Rosiel fights against Michael... He does not hold back.

You're like a cruel device
Your blood is cold like ice
Goes into my veins
My banner is your thrill
Your love is for me

Don't Stand So Close- Dr. Love
He doesn't actually allow anyone to see him as he truly is, not even his servant, Katan. On another hand, he will only allow Katan to get close to him. And yes, this is a Para-Para song.

Diva- Blood+ Soundtrack
Beautiful, but ultimately destructive and destroyed by their twins. Hauntingly scary. Diva and Rosiel scare many common traits, including the tendency to throw something away when they're done with it, and not truly caring for anything (on the surface). They are also beautiful and seductive, deliberately so.

Enjoy! Zip only.

Mediafire.
Sendspace.

EDIT: Sorry for the spaces just now.

[singles] [manga] [movie] [uzumaki] Uzumaki: Spiral Into Horror

jokersama — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:40:00 GMT

If you stare at the last image for 30 seconds and then look at a neutral surface (like your hand), apparently you see it wriggling and warping.

Uzumaki is a horror/fantasy manga that was adapted into a movie in 2000. It's more surreal and macabre than anything else; it's more like Lovecraft than Stephen King. It tells the story of Kirie Goshima, a normal high school girl who lives in the peaceful seaside town of Kurozu-cho. One morning while she's walking to school, she sees her boyfriend's father filming something with a camcorder; he's zoomed onto a snail on a wall and is so focused that he doesn't even acknowledge her greeting. She figures he's just busy, but before long, this becomes the least weird thing in her life! People turn into snails, schoolgirls start developing long curly hair that actually battles other people, and, as her boyfriend Shuichi explains, her entire town is going mad and becoming consumed by the spiral. (Because once you start looking, spirals are everywhere...)

(I like Shuichi! The poor boy is very aware that he's in a horror manga and he would LOVE to escape, but he's not leaving without Kirie, so if she wants to stay, well...XD;)

The movie is hilarious and well worth buying. The manga's a little harder to find, although all three volumes were released in English as Uzumaki: Spiral into Horror. The mangaka is Junji Ito who was hilariously (and accurately) described on a review site as a "former dental technician who spent too much time staring at the wrong end of the drill."

01. And One - Dein Ende
02. World's End Girlfriend - Ghost of a Horse Under the Chandelier
03. Psapp - Needle & Thread (lyrics)
04. Guitar - I Dream The Sand (for the manga ending)

No zip this time; it's just four songs. XD; Sorry!

[Requests] [Mythology] The Ramayana

jokersama — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 07:42:43 GMT

This is for surlykitty who requested a Ramayana FST. Personally, I think that the Mahabharata is the more interesting of the two epics, but let's see how this goes!

The Ramayana (The Travels of Rama) is the shorter of the two major Indian epic poems. This makes it a paltry 24,000 verses long, of course! It's a chronicle of the life and adventures of Lord Rama, Prince of Ayodhya. He was born a prince, but for some ridiculous reasons (mostly filial piety) he ends up spending 14 years of his life in the forest with his wife and brother. The major part of the epic involves the abduction of his wife Sita by the ten-headed demon king Ravana, who imprisons her on the island of Sri Lanka. Rama gathers an army of monkeys and bears and invades Lanka, rescues his wife, and returns back home to Ayodhya for a big party.

This story is extremely important in India even to this day; Rama is considered to be an avatar of God and an example of the ideal man and king. In 1988 or so, they made a 78-episode TV miniseries, and whenever an episode was airing, the streets were DEAD. Everyone was either at home or in front of a TV display. I have only the vaguest memories of watching it on TV; I remember that when Rama and Sita met, they conveyed LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT by about five minutes of alternating shots of their faces contorted in silly expressions.

If you want a more detailed summary of the storyline, try Wiki. I'm just hitting the major events as best as I can. There are seven chapters to the story, but most retellings only cover the first six, which basically ends with "and they all lived happily ever after!" The seventh and final chapter, which is sort of an epilogue, is quite a downer and people either don't know about it or furiously deny it. But I'll cover it anyways. Lyrics for most songs are in the song file itself if you use itunes. D:

Most of the songs are by Asian Underground artists.

01. Tin Machine - Amlapura
Once, a long long time ago, four sons were born to King Dasaratha in the north Indian city of Ayodhya. Most importantly, the eldest one was named Rama, and he was his father's favorite. In fact, his father would have probably wrapped him in cotton wool and protected him from the entire world if he hadn't been forced to send Rama and his brothers out to kill demons by some cranky sages in his kingdom. Well, it builds character!

02. Karsh Kale - Saajana (Darling)
On one of these various demon-killing field trips, Rama and his teacher visited the kingdom of Mithila, where King Janaka was holding a contest to give away his beautiful daughter Sita in marriage. To prove that you were a bad enough dude to marry the princess, you had to string an enormous iron bow that had belong to the god Siva. Now, Rama was only in his early teens at the time, but he bent the bow so hard in the process of stringing it that it actually broke. So he got to marry the beautiful and virtuous princess Sita, and then you got those nauseating five minutes of lovey-dovey looks that I remember from the TV serial.

03. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Shadow
However, King Dasaratha had three wives, and eventually one of them nagged him to death and got Rama exiled into the forest so her son Bharata could become king instead. Rama, being a dutiful son, did not complain. Sita insisted on following him, and so did his younger brother Lakshmana. Actually, the whole city was so devoted to him that he could have brought the whole city with him into the forest, but he told them to stop being silly and to serve Bharata. Bharata was sort of an innocent bystander in this family drama; he came home from vacation to find his father dead, his brother banished, and himself the new king. He yelled at his mom and tried to fix the mess but it was too late.

04. Panda Bear - Good Girl/Carrots
So Rama and his wife and brother set up camp in the forest and live for some years, killing random demons and living the simple life.

05. Asha Bhosle - Piya Tu Ab To Aaja
But one day a demoness named Surpanakha saw Rama and thought he was SUPER-HAWT and would make a good husband. She disguised herself as a beautiful woman and tried to hit on him, but the brothers teased her until she got mad. She then turned back into her demon form and tried to eat Sita so that Rama would be back on the market again. Killing women is not noble, but apparently disfiguring them is, because Lakshmana cuts off her nose and ears and sends her screaming back into the forests.

06. Talvin Singh - Vikram the Vampire
Unfortunately, Surpanakha's older brother was the handsome and diabolical ten-headed demon king Ravana, who ruled over the fabulous island kingdom of Lanka. When Surpanakha came to complain to her older brother about the mean humans who picked on her, she cunningly told him about how there was a fabulously beautiful princess in the forest who would make a GREAT addition to the royal harem. (She understood male psychology, heh heh.) Ravana's interest was piqued, so despite the advice of his counsellors who told him to stay away from married women, he ordered his minions to help him with a complicated plan to separate Sita from Rama and Lakshmana. He found her alone, approached her in the disguise of an old man, and then snatched her and flew back to Lanka with her.

07. Cornershop - We're in Your Corner
When the two brothers discover that Sita has been kidnapped, Rama becomes incredibly emo and useless and wanders about talking to trees, asking them if they've seen his wife. The trail leads south, and eventually they reach the monkey kingdom of Kishkindha, where the monkey-people live. Rama manages to secure the help of the king of the monkeys (well, by killing the former king Bali and putting Bali's younger brother on the throne so that the monkey king OWED HIM), and the monkey-people and bear-people organized an enormous search party to find Sita. (Of note, the "monkeys" and "bears" of this story were probably forest-dwelling tribal people.)

08. Nitin Sawhney - The Search
The monkey king's trusted minister, an exceptionally smart and talented monkey named Hanuman, was in the party that reached the southernmost tip of India. They had a tip that Sita was being kept in the island of Sri Lanka, but how were they going to cross the ocean and check? Well, Hanuman took an enormous form and hopped across the ocean like it was a puddle.

09. Hindi Moogy - I Dream of Hema Malini
In a heavily-guarded garden in the center of Lanka, Hanuman finds Sita, who has basically threatened to kill herself if Ravana touches her. In return, Ravana threatened her that if she doesn't become his wife, he'll just eat her. Hanuman introduces himself and offers to carry her back, but she refuses: 1) Hanuman is male and she refuses to willingly touch another man other than her husband, and 2) Rama has to redeem his honor by killing Ravana. Hanuman says "okay, whatever" and sets the city of Lanka on fire to piss off Ravana before he goes home.

10. Indian Ropeman - Do Not Deviate From Your Present Course
Rama and his army of monkey and bears takes on Ravana and his army of demons. It's an epic battle, and really quite interesting to read; they fight with magic and there's all sorts of strange beasts and demons involved, but I'm not getting into it here. Eventually Rama kills Ravana and there was much rejoicing, yay.

11. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Sweet Pain (Joi remix)
Sita is overjoyed that her husband has come to rescue her. However, Rama seems unenthused to see her after so many years. He says that he's redeemed his honor by rescuing her, but god knows what she's been up to with the demon king, and so he doesn't want to take her back. Shocked and hurt, Sita orders Lakshmana to build a funeral pyre for her; if she's been faithful to her husband, the fire won't harm her, and if she hasn't, well, she doesn't want to live any more after hearing this from her husband. However, as soon as she jumps into the flames the god of fire lifts her out of the fire and declares that she hasn't even THOUGHT about being unfaithful to Rama. Rama, quite relieved, says that he didn't think so but he had to make a big public display for everyone ELSE to believe it.

12. Hassan Hakmoun et al. - Indus Railway
Their 14 years of exile are up, so Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana fly from Lanka back to Ayodhya in a magical flying chariot, and Rama is finally crowned king.

UTTARA KANDA, THE EPILOGUE

13. Joi - Triatma
Rama is king. It is a Golden Age; children respect their elders, the lion lay down with the lamb (or the tiger with the cow, if you will), there is no sickness or unhappiness in the kingdom.

14. Depeche Mode - Policy of Truth
HOWEVAR, Rama hears that the citizens are still questioning what happened with Sita. (He had been wandering the city incognito and heard a washer throwing his wayward wife out of the house, saying that he's not an idiot like their king who accepts his wife back after she's cheated on him.) Rama is supposedly the idea king; his citizens' trust in him is the most important thing to maintain. He cannot be seen as a hypocrite by his people. Soooooo his genius idea is to banish his heavily-pregnant wife into the forest forever.

15. Peter Gabriel - We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)
Of course, he gets his brother Lakshmana to do his dirty work for him. Lakshmana thinks this is horrible, just as he thought putting Sita through the trial of fire back in Lanka, but he does what he's told! He takes Sita out for a nice drive in the forest, and then tells her that she has to stay there, apologizing profusely. Sita, who is 9 months pregnant, goes and stays with the holy man Valmiki (who is the author of the Ramayana). She gives birth to twin boys, Lava and Kusha, who grow up in the forest community. Years pass.

16. Bent - Comin' Back
After many years, Rama eventually learns that he has twin sons and figures that enough time has passed and he can ask Sita to come back to the city and be his wife again. And then:

Rama threatens to destroy the world if the earth does not give him his wife back, but she's long gone.

17. Coil - Triple Sun
Many years later, as Rama is getting old, he's also forced to banish his brother Lakshmana for a ridiculous reason. Lakshmana willingly leaves the city, and then commits suicide.

Back in Ayodhya, Ram knew that Lakshman would never be able to live without him and he himself no longer cared to carry on a life which had ceased to have any meaning for him. Firm in his vows of dharmic discipline, he had been forced to part, one by one, from all those whom he held most dear. He had always known that life was only a dream, a dream in which he had been called upon to play a part. He had come to the end of his lines. The curtain was going up for the final scene and he had already been given his cue to depart.

18. Nitin Sawhney - The Boatman
Rama gathers together anyone who wishes to follow him, and he walks into the Sarayu River until it closes over his head. He rises from the waters in the form of the god Vishnu and disappears into the heavens.

[[ ZIP OF ALL SONGS (110 MB) ]] (sorry, almost forgot about this!)

LINKS:

Here is a nice, fairly condensed, fairly easy-to-read version of the epic.
Sita Sings The Blues is a giggle; it's an animated version of the Ramayana, told from Sita's point of view, using old jazz tunes.
Arrow of the Blue Skinned God is a fascinating book that retells the Ramayana briefly as well as documents its relevance in modern India. It was written by a reporter, and it's a great read if you're at all interested in Indian mythology.

[game] [Metal Gear Solid 2] Turn Off Your Computer Right Now!

jokersama — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:17:31 GMT

Hooray, yet another entry in the stream of last-minute FSTs squeaking under the wire! So, let's go with my favorite Metal Gear Solid game: the second one, Sons of Liberty.

Before I played any of the Metal Gear games, I had the vague notion that they were these manly FPS war games where you went around shooting people - you know, kind of like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor or so on. I wasn't terribly interested until I got strong-armed into playing the series, and I was suddenly, violently hooked; the games had plot and humor and quite a bit of delicious philosowankery about nature vs. nurture and the nature of violence and WHAT IS A MAN and so on and so forth.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a game that seems to inspire strong opinions either way. This X-Play clip seems to encapsulate the average fanboy's reaction to the game. (Revenge!) They bitched and moaned that they only got to play Solid Snake for about 1/8th of the game and were "forced" to play as sparkly blond rookie/ninja Raiden. Personally, I loved the game and actually am quite fond of poor Raiden (not because of the sneaking suit - come on, they're ALL wearing skintight suits.)

The game is ostensibly about rookie soldier Raiden, who is a member of the black ops group FOXHOUND that Solid Snake had belonged to. He's dropped onto a oil treatment plant in the Hudson River with orders to infiltrate the plant and rescue the US President, who had been taken hostage by a group of terrorists calling themselves the Sons of Liberty. The leader of the terrorists is thought to be Solid Snake, who was also responsible for sinking the oil tanker in the Hudson River in the first place. The terrorists are threatening to kill the President and/or set off a nuclear bomb if their demands aren't met. Raiden is accompanied on CODEC by Colonel Campbell, Snake's former CO, and Rosemary, Raiden's girlfriend who happens to be a data analyst.

Raiden, however, hasn't actually ever had a live mission before; this is his first time facing real enemies with real weapons. He's not too worried, though; he's trained extensively in VR and figures that after playing as Solid Snake so many times, he's probably as good as him by now! This is an example of the commentary hidden in the game; what Raiden trained with were the bonus VR missions for MGS1. Raiden's essentially the player - someone who has used video games to pretend to be a killer, who is so divorced from the reality of the violence he inflicts that the entire mission is like a game to him.

That's kind of how the whole game goes - while the game ostensibly seems to be about ninjas and bisexual vampires and bombs and the President and METAL GEAR and eating gunpowder and whiny girlfriends and tentacles, it actually gives you some interesting philosophical concepts to chew upon in a fairly postmodern structure and storyline - if you like that sort of thing. I can't even begin to touch on all the details of the convoluted plot; it really does make beautiful sense if you think about it for a while, and it has all sorts of amazing easter eggs, like the 25876538763 different meanings of Raiden's real name, "Jack."

You can also spend your time holding up soldiers and shaking them down for dogtags if that's more your style.

Anyways blah blah music.

(front by poisreverie, back by nemissa, both edited by nemissa >:3 )

TANKER CHAPTER

01. Holy Fuck - K.Rhythm Pt.2
SOLID SNAKE: Sneak, sneak, sneaky-sneak, let's take pictures of pinups and find out where the Marines are hiding their prototype anti-Gear Gear, METAL GEAR RAY! ...and I blew myself up again by shooting the C4 instead of the trigger. What the fuck, Russian mercenaries?

02. Tricky - My Evil Is Strong
Revolver Ocelot steals the RAY, but he has a funny little spell - because he's replaced the arm he lost in MGS1 with Liquid Snake's arm, essentially making him Jigoku Sensei Ocelot.
LIQUID: SUP GUYS! >:D
OCELOT and SNAKE: GO AWAY
GAMERS: ...what the fuck, demonic possession? In Metal Gear?

03. Goldfrapp - Lovely Head (Staré Mêsto Mix)
Ocelot sinks the tanker after killing all the Marines, Russian mercenaries, and presumably Snakes on board. One of the Russian mercenaries onboard is Olga Gurlukovich, who is the tough-as-nails soldier daughter of the Colonel Gurlukovich. The Colonel's last thoughts are for her safety. She's pretty masculine, so I guess that balances out Raiden being so pretty.

After this disaster, Solid Snake is either dead, an internationally-wanted eco-terrorist, or some combination of the two. Crap.

PLANT CHAPTER (sorry, that's how short the tanker chapter is!)

04. Interpol - Evil
RAIDEN: Awesome, I'm on my first solo mission! I wanted my codename to be 'Snake' but they insisted on 'Raiden.' D:
ROSE: Good luck, Jack! :D
RAIDEN: Rose, can you please remember to call me by my codename?
ROSE: Okay, Jack. :D By the way, do you remember what tomorrow is? Hint hint?
RAIDEN: .....(I'm trying to single-handedly overpower a terrorist group and she wants me to remember what tomorrow is?) April 30?...is it your birthday?
ROSE: NO, YOU JERK
RAIDEN: FUCK
MALE PLAYERS: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT
ME: Oh god, I know women like this. D: I, I gotta hand it to him - somehow, Kojima has accurately replicated That One Couple that you always see arguing at parties!
KOJIMA: Actually, Rose is patterned after my wife. :D
ME: >_>
(This comic pretty much sums up my gaming experience.)

05. Alien Sex Fiend - On A Mission
COLONEL: Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President?
RAIDEN: Sure!
COLONEL: Actually you're trying to prevent the terrorists from destroying the plant and spilling all the oil into the harbor.
RAIDEN: So...okay...I'm trying to stop the terrorists...from...
COLONEL: From killing all the hostages.
RAIDEN: So I should go after the President, right?
COLONEL: ACTUALLY, you are trying to stop the terrorists from detonating a nuclear bomb in retaliation for not getting their demands met!
RAIDEN: ...huh?
COLONEL: Actually, the detonation of the bomb was their aim after all, not the demands, so screw the hostages.
RAIDEN: I'm confused.
ROSE: JACK, WHAT DAY IS IT TOMORROW?

06. Orquesta del Plata - Montserrat
This would be the part where Raiden meets Vamp, and the player is left to wonder where super-speed vampires fit into this world. But he's not called Vamp because he's a vampire - no, he's called that because he's bisexual. The person who informs you of this random factoid is...

07. Eurythmics - Greetings From A Dead Man
...Iroquois Pliskin, Lieutenant Jr. Grade. Yeah, that's one cunning pseudonym there. (Google "iroquois" and "plissken" if it's not headslappingly obvious. If you ask him about it much later in the game, he'll tell you the history of Manhattan island. Freak.) Pliskin acts as your world-weary backup in your confused charge through the Plant.

08. Tomahawk - Aktion 13F14
Pliskin gives Raiden a lot of crap about being a "digital grunt for a digital age," who's never actually fought in a real battlefield where he could actually get hurt. Raiden seesaws between being insulted and impressed by Pliskin.

09. Raiden - Fallin'
(Don't hurt me D:) After fighting a bunch of superpowered terrorists, rescuing the hostages, defusing a bunch of bombs, getting groped by the President of the United States, and shooting down a Harrier jet with a shoulder-mounted missile-launcher, Raiden has to swim over to a partially-submerged section of the Plant in order to reach one of those teen genius programmers so that she can defuse the impending nuclear launch. Unsurprisingly, this 1337 haxx0r is Otacon's younger half-sister, Emma Emmerich (E.E.), who somehow shares the Emmerich weak bladder.

10. The Chemical Brothers - If You Kling To Me I'll Klong You
(the joke's still amusing enough, angrybabble)
Raiden has to rescue E.E., but she's both terrifed by water and supposedly unable to walk. So Raiden has to lead Emma by the hand, in a part of the game clearly aimed to appeal to female gamers. (I think)

11. Grizzly Bear - Deep Sea Diver
One of my favorite parts of the game is probably the sequence where you swim through the submerged corridors of the Plant with E.E. clinging to your back.
E.E: I'm scared of water! I'll drown!
RAIDEN: Look, Emma, just close your eyes and listen to my heartbeat. When you reach 100, open your eyes and we'll be there.
ME: BWAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT THE HELL DO THEY EXPECT ME TO FALL FOR SUCH SHAMELESS FANBAIT yes please

12. Bent - So Long Without You
Man, sucks to be Otacon. I mean, he's a engineer and otaku, of course he's not the greatest with girls....but his track record with women is really pretty disturbing. OUTSIDE OF YOUR OWN GENE POOL, OKAY, DUDE? This scene was pretty sad, though.

13. Babybird - Bad Old Man
Right around here, Raiden is tasered by Snake and the Cyborg Ninja (who in this game is Olga Gurlukovich...hee!) and wakes up buck naked and strapped to some kind of torture device. Turns out that the leader of the terrorists, Solid*us* Snake, is actually the ex-president of the United States, George Sears, and Raiden's adoptive father. Raiden had been suppressing this memory because, uh...because he wanted to have tentacles shoved down his throat and to have this long rambly argument with Rose that he doesn't like to share touchy-feely details about his life with her because he grew up as a child soldier eating hallucinogenic gunpowder in his food. No, seriously. It's pretty hilarious.

14. Skinny Puppy - Use Less
Raiden tries to contact his CO, but for some reason both the Colonel and the Rose are saying complete nonsense about how Raiden has to finish the simulation and are basically acting like glitchy AIs. Which, in fact, they were. All along.
(This is where a lot of people clutch their heads, start screaming, and stop playing the game. But I love it so much - the insane codec messages, the FISSION MAILED, the randomly-changing area names, the lack-of-a-map!)

15. SCHAFT - inFORMation
If I had to summarize the big argument at the end of the game, it'd go something like this.
COLONEL/ROSE/WHOEVER: Hi, we're the Patriots, otherwise known as the LA-LI-LU-LE-LO. We're a meme that resides in the United States government. Right now we're building the world's biggest and best SpamCatcher, ARSENAL GEAR!
RAIDEN: But why would you do that?
PATRIOTS: To filter out all the useless crap and gossip and nonsense in human history that would otherwise clog up the internets and be pointlessly preserved for all time. We like our internets clean!
RAIDEN: But sometimes you put my forum signup posts in the spamcatcher and I miss them! I kind of like having the free will to decide what's spam and what's not.
PATRIOTS: But isn't that a waste of your valuable time?
RAIDEN: ...but...
PATRIOTS: No longer will the people of the future have to wade through TomKat gossip and other cultural trash to find the useful parts of our civilization! You'll like it! Besides, it's not like you can stop us.
RAIDEN: ...other than that virus E.E. partially uploaded into you?
PATRIOTS: ...besides that.

16. Hotei Tomoyasu - Katana Groove
Raiden gains a blade and the right to be the next cyborg ninja in the MGS series! The problem is, they tend to have the lifespan of a lemming. D: Noes!

17. Death In June - She Said Destroy
Before the Patriots (and their #1 agent, Revolver Ocelot) can totally waste Raiden and Snake, they have to mow through the two toughest women in the series - Fortune, the woman who cannot die (no matter how much she wants to), and Olga Gurlukovich, the Cyborg Ninja (mk II).

18. Nine Inch Nails - Underneath the Skin
Also, Raiden has to defeat between 5 and 25 Metal Gear Rays. Augh, holy shit. The setting is gorgeous, though; it's a technological womb where the floor lights up in green hexagons wherever Raiden steps. (Hint: the RAYs are numbered R01E through R25E; to end the battle quick you just have to kill R05E. >_> Hmmmmmmmmmmm)

19. SOFT BALLET - Vietnam
Raiden basically has to continue living so that Olga's child will not die, and also so that he can decide what ~~he wants to go into his spam filter~~ HE wants to pass on to the next generation.

20. Thee Silver Mount Zion and Tra-la-la Band - Ring Them Bells (Freedom Has Come and Gone)
Raiden wins the battle against his foster-father, but it's a pretty hollow victory in the end; he agrees with some of Solidus's sentiments. Humanity has to decide for itself what it believes in and what it chooses to pass on; it can't look to an outside source to decide for them. So, what is Jack going to do? Go back to his girlfriend, who may or may not truly exist and may or may not be pregnant with his child? Follow his mentor Snake, who may or may not truly exist and who is chasing a megalomaniac with a giant mecha? Or start over by himself and figure out where he wants to go from here?

(By the way, April 30 is the anniversary of George Washington's inauguration as President at Federal Hall. DUH, WHY DIDN'T RAIDEN THINK OF THAT IMMEDIATELY??)

[[ ZIP (20 songs, 140 MB) ]] (sorry!)

I know that there's already been a MGS2 fst, but er, hey, this is the second, then! Any thoughts on the game? Or just comment if you download, I don't care. :D

[manga] JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Homoerotic Beatdown Manga

jokersama — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 21:11:56 GMT

This was requested by yoshitsune and maybe I bit off more than I could chew. D: At any rate, under the cuts you will find eight images, a fairly lengthy description of the series, and seven discs with seven zips. D: Please bear with me.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a long-running shounen series famous for its hyperkinetic and detailed art, memorably weird characters, and overall cheerfully strange storyline. Araki Hirohiko himself has said something along the lines of that when he made this series, he just wanted people to be able to read it and go, "Man, that was fun!" (instead of gaining a deeper understanding of life from it, which ruins many a fine series). The mangaka loves western pop culture and music, and has named his characters after various bands and foods and movies that he happens to like. JoJo is extremely influential in the manga and gaming world; it has inspired such mangaka as Togushi (Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter) and Watsuki (Rurouni Kenshin); characters in Street Fighter and King of Fighters were based on JoJo characters (such as Guile and Benimaru); and even shoujo mangaka have fallen under its evil sway, such as the well-documented love that CLAMP has for JoJo. (They've written horrifying mpreg doujinshi for JoJo, and have ganked both character designs and plot points from JoJo.) It's intelligent, badass, weird, AND silly at the same time, which means I love it, and I've loved it since I first heard of it about ten years ago.

Unfortunately, the ridiculous saga of the Joestar family has been largely unknown in the US, although it's already been translated into several other languages. But part of the manga has just been released in English so, you know, do me a favor and pick it up, okay? Please?

This FST has a large number of songs, and not because I just threw everything I could think of into a list and pretended it was an FST. >_> This wretched series is 87 volumes and counting - yes, eighty-seven - and even if you break it up into seven arcs, each arc is about as long as your average regular manga series. So I tried to stick with 5-15 songs per arc, and this is what I ended up with. I really do apologize.

I promise that this will not add your tenth copy of "Pretty When You Cry" to your music collections, though.

Yes, I actually have read about 84 out of the 87 volumes, and that's because the series is like junk food for the brain. You can plow through five or six volumes at a go because the action is so fast-paced and ridiculous, and it's so much fun that it doesn't weigh your mind down over-much (unless you stop and try to apply realistic proportions or the laws of physics, which you should NEVER do with shounen!) What I also like about JoJo is that although it is a shounen manga, and there are a lot of fights...

1) None of the fights are ever more than a handful of chapters long. Basically the JoJo du Jour takes a beating for a chapter or two so that he can learn the enemy's style and weakness, and then he'll strike back decisively for a quick win. You will never have a battle that drags on for 20+ chapters. Usually it's 4-5 chapters; the most I've ever seen was 10 chapters and that involved multiple separate fights with different characters.
2) NO TOURNAMENTS. DEAR GOD NO BATTLE TOURNAMENTS.
3) Usually (and I'm saying in the first four arcs at least) the heroes don't win by pulling a new random power out of their asses. They have a very specific, limited set of abilities, and to win, they just have to figure out how to use those abilities in creative ways. They win because of their brains and by using strategy, not because they bust out a secret technique. How cool is that?
4) His female characters never suck. Some may be silly, but they don't SUCK. Araki's idea of a heterosexual relationship (when he can be arsed to put one in, which is rarely) apparently involves one of the two people being a certified nutter. His women are either badass or hilariously psycho or both, which I think makes them fun.
5) The characters come from all different races and backgrounds, as the mangaka has travelled the world and says that he thinks it's boring if everyone in a series is Japanese or American or whatever. There have been Egyptians, Italians, Native Americans, African-Americans, you name it.

Another thing that will strike you while reading JoJo, particularly the later arcs, is the homoeroticism. Shounen manga, with its overabundance of muscular men and manly friendships, is kind of skewed that way anyways, and paired with the mangaka's love of drawing his characters lying all over each other in skanky outfits - well, this series has broken the safety glass on my gaydar more times than I can count. I think the best way to understand this series is to understand that the mangaka's favorite musician is Prince. So he was aiming for Prince - who is fabulously fabulous, badass, and heterosexual as hell - and sort of fudged that last criterion.

I hope that this mix is fun, because honestly, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure can barely take ITSELF seriously - so why should you?

This is about as heterosexual it's gonna get. (And even THEN it's pretty wrong, Giorno x Jolyne.) (New image drawn in like an hour by nemissa, holy shit, used with permission)

PROS
You meet the Joestars, the Zeppelis, Speedwagon, and, most importantly, DIO BRANDO, the baby-killing, puppy-kicking bastard. ♥
Backstory is always good.
This is the arc in which the most screaming of WRYYYYYY, UREYYYYYY, URYYYYYY, KUAAAA, GYAAAA, etc goes on. For those of you with RIDICULOUS SOUND-EFFECT fetishes, or /b/tards. >D
Sets the bar for ridiculous violence.
The baby scene. Oh my god. I have yet to meet someone who could read the baby scene and not LOVE DIO BRANDO. >D

CONS
The anatomy's kinda horrible, and the art's really oldschool shounen.
The mangaka doesn't quite seem to realize that his manga is ridiculous. Still seems to be taking it somewhat seriously at this point.
Seems to have inspired CLAMP as well as many other mangaka. Some of CLAMP's jojo-related fan-nonsense and plot ripoffs hurt me so much. XD This may be a plus to some of you.
A little more boring than the later arcs, but it HAS TO BE READ FIRST to get to the rest

Part 1 is set in the 1880s, and is the saga of the young lord Jonathan Joestar and his adopted brother/arch-nemesis Dio Brando. Jonathan's father, Lord Joestar, adopted Dio out of a mistaken sense of gratitude towards Dio's father, a thief who had 'saved' the lord's life. Dio turns out to be the sort of guy who's perfect on the outside and completely rotten on the inside; he's made it his personal mission to ruin Jonathan's life out of envy. So he steals Jonathan's girlfriend, shows him up in academics and sports, kisses up to Jonathan's father, burns his dog alive, you know, the usual stuff. But when Jonathan finds out that Dio is planning to kill Lord Joestar, he declares that this is NOT ON and hurries to find a way to thwart Dio's evil plans. But since Dio is so charming and popular, he can't openly attack or denounce Dio.

At this point the story is very Fist of the Northstar-ish, with huge muscular men posing and being manly and noble and yelling out battle cries. But then the story takes a sharp turn into the 'bizarre' and never looks back.

Jonathan's an archaeologist-in-training and has been studying a family heirloom for his thesis. This heirloom, a stone Aztec mask, has some kind of strange power to "unlock the hidden potential of the human mind," but Jonathan's not sure what the hell this means; as far as he can tell the mask needs some kind of blood sacrifice to unlock its power. Dio, however, decides to use himself as the first test subject, and kills Lord Joestar to provide the necessary blood. When Dio wears the mask, it plunges tentacles into his brain and turns him into a vampire. And you know what vampires say?

WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
(Or UREYYYY, or URYYYY; he's not particularly picky about it.) Now Jonathan is locked in a battle to the death with the newly-vampiric Dio Brando and his vampire crew, including Jack the Ripper. Although JoJo is ENORMOUS AND BURLY, his muscles alone can't harm Dio. He has to learn a SPECIAL TECHNIQUE called hamon (ripple) which uses some weirdo combo of sunlight and vibration to destroy the undead. He learns this from the Italian hamon master Will A. Zeppeli, who had learned it from the famed Tibetan monk Tom Petty and his two disciples, Dire and Straits.

Don't look at ME, I'm just reporting it.

After many battles, Jonathan succeeds in cutting Dio's head off, but this apparently isn't enough. When Jonathan goes on his honeymoon cruise some weeks later, the severed head of Dio sneaks aboard and attacks him, sinking the ship and killing Jonathan. But Jonathan, in his dying moments, is able to clutch Dio's head to his chest and take Dio to the bottom of the ocean with him.

Forever Love, dude. Forever Dream.

01. Gomez - Machismo [ lyrics ]
Kind of self-explanatory.
02. Big Black - Bad Penny [ lyrics ]
Well, it's obviously about the sort of guy who is a total asshole but seems to get away with it, no matter how badly he behaves.
03. Ruby - Bud [ lyrics ]
More songs for Dio! Everyone loves him!
04. Ludes - Your Dog Don't Bark
This one's for poor Jonathan, whose life is ruined by Dio. Also because Dio burns his dog to death, making the very end of the song almost hilarious in a way. (I'm cruel orz)
05. The Doors - End of the Night [ lyrics ]
Well, this song's based on the Blake poem 'Auguries of Innocence,' and in particular the lines about how some people are born to sweet delight, and others are born to endless night. As Jonathan and Dio say they're like two sides of the same coin, one good and one bad, well...
06. Dio - Rainbow in the Dark [ lyrics ]
Oh, come on! >3
07. Voltaire - The Headless Waltz [ lyrics ]
Kinda obvious.
08. Gavin Friday - Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves [ lyrics ]
Hahaha, this is sort of a joke, but at the same time, I do think Jonathan and Dio are fond of each other in a "too bad you must die" way.

[[ ZIP FOR PART ONE (31 MB) ]]

PROS:
Joseph Joestar, possibly the most awesome of all the Joestars. He has twice the personality of all the others combined, and I REALLY LIKE the other Joestars.
Possibly the funniest of all the arcs. See above.
CYBORG NAZIS VS. AZTEC VAMPIRES.
The really crazy posing begins.
Also, it's the retarded adventures of a young man in leather with a motorcycle.
Demonstrates how it's possible to be both heroic and sentimental and also hilariously pragmatic and badass.
The introduction of the Joestar motto: RUN AWAYYYYY!!!
The introduction of slightly questionable PASSIONATE MALE FRIENDSHIP between young men with high ideals. We will return to this concept again. Oh yes.
The start of LOTS AND LOTS OF MAN-BLING (which will continue throughout the rest of the series)

CONS:
Joseph gets OLD in the later arcs! That's not right! ;_;
...okay, so that ending was a little deus ex machina. But how ELSE do you beat an ultimate life form?
Joseph, did you just marry Suzi Q because she was THERE?
How come Caesar ditched the Zeppeli PimpHat?! Don't you like looking like a ringmaster?

Part 2 picks up 40 years later with Jonathan's 18-year-old grandson, Joseph Joestar, who is ALSO an improbably huge 6'5" British man with green eyes. This JoJo has the most STYLE out of all the JoJos, I think; he deflects laser eyebeams with shotglasses and would quite happily kick someone in the nuts and run away if he needed time to think of a better plan. This arc of the story is so much fun to read, simply because Joseph's very clever and quick-witted - but he's also a goddamn idiot that will have you slapping your forehead and groaning at the terribleness of it all.

Also, if you think part 1's story was weird, well, in this arc Joseph battles cyborg Nazis and a quartet of Aztec vampire gods named Santana, Wham!, AC/DC, and Cars. His allies in these battles are the MILFy hamon mistress Lisa Lisa and an Italian boy his own age, Caesar Zeppeli (the grandson of Will A. Zeppeli from part 1.) This arc is set in NYC, Mexico, Austria, and Rome; one of the best parts about the JoJo manga is that the author loves to travel and the locations are always (sort of) accurately described. Well, except for the parts about horse-racing half-naked Aztec gods in the Colosseum.

01. Mindless Self Indulgence - Stupid MF [ lyrics ]
Joseph, as nice a guy as he is, is a delightfully arrogant and jackassy hero who doesn't hesitate to punch people in the face if they annoy him. This song is pretty much his attitude towards the world. ;;^^
02. Machine Gun Fellatio - Muthafukka on a Motorcycle [ lyrics ]
Joseph roadtrips through Mexico on his motorcycle in search of his missing "Uncle Speedwagon," kicking Nazi ass on the way.
03. Spike Jokes - Der Führer's Face [ lyrics ]
I got this from angrybabble, which is a satirical song from a real Disney short called "Donald in Nutziland" in which I think Donald Duck becomes a Nazi and everyone mocks him. At any rate, this is for Stroheim and all his weirdo Nazi crew.
04. Cafe Tacuba - El Aparato [ lyrics ]
My understanding is this is a song about Mexican peasants who got abducted by aliens. This'un's for the quartet of Aztec vampire gods, Cars, Wham, AC/DC, and Santana.
05. Ween - Voodoo Lady [ lyrics ]
Joseph gets trained in the ways of hamon by the mysterious hamon-user Lisa Lisa, who has no qualms about letting him die if he can't climb up the mysterious oil-covered phallic tower to the platform on top.
06. Depeche Mode - Now This Is Fun [ lyrics ]
Joseph and Caesar undergo the world's fastest hamon training, and by the end of the month can walk on water and stop knives with a fingertip. Exploding vampires shouldn't be a problem!
07. Simple Minds - Big Sleep [ lyrics ]
Oh noes, emo woes!
08. Coil - Slur [ lyrics ]
Joseph has to meet the remaining vampire gods in the Colosseum at sunset for a demonic horse race right out of Ben Hur.
09. Genesis - Dance on a Volcano [ lyrics ]
Prog rock for the end of the arc.

[[ ZIP FOR PART TWO (34 MB) ]]

PROS:
The best place to start if you had to just start anywhere in the middle, which is why they picked up the manga for US release starting here
Really cool if you like travelogues
You actually get a sense of what it's like to be on a long roadtrip with these morons
Introduces Stands and Jotaro (who's gonna be around for a while so you might as well get acquainted)
ROAD ROLLER!!!!111 (this is the arc in which Dio dumps a steam roller on Jotaro)

CONS:
The most formulaic of the arcs (as in they fight a bunch of people as they travel through Eurasia, and then they fight Dio at the end)
May upset people who expect all the heroes in their series to live happily every after (or just live, period >3)

Part 3 is the most famous and popular arc, and has had the most merchandising tied to it (two video games, ovas, garage kits, you name it). THIS is the arc that is being translated and released in the US, and I strongly encourage you to pick it up! (Besides, the hero of this arc makes at least a cameo on the next three arcs.) This arc is set in 1987 in Japan.

The hero this time is Joseph's 17-year-old grandson, Kujo Jotaro, a half-Japanese kid who's still 6'5" with 'greenish' eyes. Jotaro is more serious and, well, 'badass' than Joseph; he's sort of got a 'gang leader' look to him, but being a Joestar, he's actually very nice and full of righteousness and so on. When you meet Jotaro, he's gotten thrown in jail for being involved in a massive brawl in which he was miraculously unharmed. He wasn't actually at fault so the police released him from custody, but when his mother came to pick him up, he absolutely refused to leave the jail cell, saying that he's been 'possessed' by an evil spirit. He thinks he's a menace to society and won't leave the jail until he's figured out what the hell is going on. To prove his point, he snatches a gun from a cop without moving from the spot and then shoots himself in the head, only to have the bullet stop in midair, held by an invisible hand. Jotaro's mom panics and calls her father, and Joseph flies over from NYC to deal with his punk-ass grandson. After much posing and some tough love (i.e. a beatdown), Joseph explains to Jotaro that this isn't possession; Jotaro has a Stand and so does Joseph.

In this arc, the mangaka got rid of the idea of 'hamon power' and replaced it with 'Stands,' that is, physical manifestations of psychic powers that will "stand by me". Stands look like gods or demons or plants or animals or robots hovering invisibly by their user, and only other Stand-users can see them. (If you've played any of the Persona games, Persona are pretty much Stands. JoJo-references strike again!) Each Stand has a different set of powers and abilities, and to damage a Stand will injure the user, and vice versa. The Stands in this arc are named after tarot cards, like Jotaro's Star Platinum or Joseph's Hermit Purple, but when the mangaka ran out of those he started naming them after songs and bands, as usual. (You can see how this influenced many series to come.)

The 'explanation' for Stands is that a recent shipwreck salvaging expedition discovered a British ship that had sunk a century ago, and one of the items they found was a coffin with the word 'Dio' on it. Of course, that salvage ship was later found completely empty and lifeless (shades of Bram Stoker). Joseph says that through his Stand's psychic photography he discovered that the coffin contained their family's arch-nemesis Dio Brando, who had survived the centuries by attaching his own severed head to Jonathan Joestar's body.

No, really.

Dio has a Stand ("The World"), and therefore anyone with Joestar blood also developed Stands through their psychic connection with their ancestor's stolen body. (They can tell that it's their ancestor's body because all Joestars have a star-shaped birthmark on the back of their necks, and...okay, it IS stupid. Just accept it.) However, only people with a strong fighting spirit can control Stands, and Jotaro's mom isn't a brawny Joestar man like her father and son. Her stand starts eating her alive and puts her into a coma, and Joseph and Jotaro, at a loss how to save her, basically decide, 'what the hell, let's go kill Dio and see if that helps.' So they head off on a massive roadtrip with a merry bunch of weirdoes across the entire continent of Asia to reach Egypt, where they think Dio is. So, this is the most like a "tournament" arc of the story, but really, this arc is where the author's travel experiences add a lot to the manga; the characters eat local food and see local sights and there are all sorts of those little details. It's like a roadtrip story, with asskicking on the side.

01. Brian Eno - The Jezebel Sprit [ lyrics ]
Obviously, a song about an exorcism. Er...Jotaro thinks he's possessed at the start of the series. Yeah.
02. The Strokes - Hard to Explain [ lyrics ]
It's hard to pick a song for Jotaro, since he's so goddamn stoic. The mangaka says he was aiming for someone who was calmer and more laid-back than the spazzy Joseph, but it's hard to convey someone who's quiet in a manga without making them come across as stone-faced. Well, this is the best I could do.
03. Daft Punk - The Brainwasher
Dio LIIIIIIIIIIVES! And he's described as a "weirdly sexy" man who comes up to young men at night and takes over their minds.
04. Brian Eno - Burning Airlines Give You So Much More [ lyrics ]
So our party starts their journey west! But they don't seem to realize that if you get into a supernatural fight on a plane, THE PLANE WILL CRASH.
05. Ladytron - International Dateline [ lyrics ]
So they keep going west, by boat and camel and jeep and train, and battle more stupid villains along the way.
06. Duran Duran - Tel Aviv
07. Hot Hot Heat - In Cairo [ lyrics ]
They finally reach Cairo, where Dio is sleeping in the darkness somewhere. Gotta find him. Yup.
08. White Zombie - Ratfinks, Suicide Tanks, and Cannibal Girls [ lyrics ]
Did I mention that the villains are weird?
09. The The - Giant [ lyrics ]
OH NOES, EMO WOES
10. Coil - Are You Shivering? [ lyrics ]
Dio's power (which you may know already) is one hell of a creepy one, if used right. He uses it to kill people right in front of Jotaro, and neither can move to defend themselves.
11. Tenacious D - Dio [ lyrics ]
Dio has rocked for a long long time~ o/~
12. Pixies - Where Is My Mind? [ lyrics ]
This song is apparently about snorkeling, stoned, in the Caribbean. Jotaro becomes a marine biologist of some sort after this is all over, possibly because fishes don't require conversation. You know this is what he spent all his time doing, as an independently wealthy young man!

[[ ZIP OF PART THREE (75 MB) ]]

PROS:
Really has the most "everyday life" feel of all the arcs (for whatever THAT'S worth in this weird universe)
An experimental arc, both in terms of art and structure
Hilarious characters, including the BEST MARTY STU EVER (a 20-year-old male model/mangaka who is a complete weirdo and who gets his ass kicked by Josuke before becoming 'good')
A younger, more open, less mysteriously badass JoJo
The beginning of the mangaka's obsession with drawing naked serial killers for PAGES AND PAGES AND PAGES, WHAT GIVES, MAN

CONS:
The episodic nature of this arc can be frustrating to some people
The art can fluctuate wildly (but is starting to get better)
You get the impression that the series was supposed to have ended with Arc 3, and he's basically drawing whatever the fuck comes to mind
A few (very few) hanging plot threads
Dammit, Joseph! Knocking up random women isn't right! How could you?

Part 4 is set back in Japan in the fictional town of Morio-cho in the year 1999. The Joestars have discovered that the now-quite-elderly Joseph has been a little indiscreet in the past; he had a fling with a Japanese woman in the mid-1980s and apparently sired a son who is now in his teens. After everyone slapped Joseph upside the head for his nonsense, Jotaro reluctantly travelled to Morio-cho to meet his new uncle, who would be something like 15 years his junior) and offer him a chance to join the family and get in on Joseph's inheritance. He meets Higashikata Josuke, a high schooler who looks like an old-fashioned Yankee, regent hairstyle and all. Of course, everyone makes fun of his silly hair, and when they do, the normally sweet-natured Josuke goes nuts and administers a beatdown, often without actually touching them. Jotaro realizes that this is Josuke's Stand, Crazy Diamond, and he decides to hang around a while to figure out what's going on. There's dozens of high schoolers running about with Stands who need to be contained. (Come on, if you had psychic powers as a high schooler, wouldn't you use them to get your way?) So Araki wastes a lot of time on these self-contained stories, and then remembers that he needs a proper plot and introduces Yoshikage Kira, a serial killer who explodes women with his bomb-making stand, Killer Queen, and then takes home their severed hands to be his "girlfriend" (with all that entails, use your imagination) until they get too smelly and he has to "break up with them" and kill again.

(For the record, the -suke in Josuke can also be read as -jo.)

01. Nina Simone - Summertime [ lyrics ]
This is my favorite cover of this song ever, mostly because of the unsettling, creepy vibe she puts into it. After all, Morio-cho is a town where a dozen young girls have been raped and murdered in the past decade, and nobody seems to notice!
02. Kishidan - Kira Kira [ lyrics ]
Kishidan is a genuine YANKEE BAND. You owe it to yourself to watch the video for this, at the very least, to see why it's just right for Part 4. XD
03. The Go! Team - Bottle Rocket
04. The Delltones - Pretty Vacant [ lyrics ]
More songs for the young tardlings of Part 4.
05. Tommy February6 - ChOOse mE or Die [ lyrics ]
The token girl in this arc is a young lady named Yukako, who becomes infatuated with one of the heroes and kidnaps him to prove her love for him (and to improve his grades). When he tries to escape, she tries to strangle him with her hair stand, Love Deluxe. She really does love him, though, and this is probably the cutest pairing in the entire series!
06. The Golden Palominos - Victim [ lyrics ]
The heroes meet the ghost of a murdered girl, who is doomed to haunt the town until her killer is found. (Araki ganked her story from the "Humans can Lick Too" horror story I remember well from my childhood)
07. Greenskeepers - Lotion [ lyrics ]
Aha, and here's Yoshikage Kira, our psychopathic killer! :D (Seriously, get this song, it's HILARIOUS.)
08. Penpals - Here Comes Your Man [ lyrics ]
There's a prolonged battle between Kira and Jotaro (aided by Koichi), and Kira escapes into the body of another man.
09. Black Heart Procession - Fingerprints [ lyrics ]
But he can't escape forever...
10. Sweet - Ballroom Blitz [ lyrics ]
And there's ANOTHER badass final battle, with kind of a hilarious conclusion.
11. Adam Ant - Scorpio Rising [ lyrics ]
And life in Morio-cho returns to normal...sort of...

[[ ZIP OF PART FOUR (42 MB) ]]

PROS:
The start of the detailed, gorgeous art
Accurate information about slumming in Italy
Men who always shoot their guns braced with both hands, not one-handed gangsta-style (this cover image notwithstanding)
Makes its own gay jokes (it'll have chapters of innuendo leading up to a gay joke that's like something you'd read in a fic)
Will innure you to skanky man-fashions (possibly a con?! I was able to watch Zoolander after reading this arc and not find any of the clothes WEIRD.)
The fights are still awesome!
More crazy mofos, like Vinegar Doppio
Also, it will make you so hungry for Italian food after reading this ("Mmmm...Risotto ...Formaggio...")
The lone girl isn't whiny or annoying; you almost feel sorry for her to be stuck in a crowd of teenage boys who are completely uninterested in her feminine charms.

CONS:
Dude, I still don't understand exactly how King Crimson's power works.
And hello, Araki, you can't just end an arc by entering the Konami code. Really. LAME.

Part 5 was set in Italy in 2001, and was the twistiest and most homoerotic arc yet. If you look at these characters, who are all extremely slim and long-lashed and pouty- mouthed and beautiful and FABULOUSLY FABULOUS, you'd barely believe that this was the same artist and same series as the enormous men of parts 1 and 2. The prettyboys of Part 5 spend all their time wearing ridiculous skanky costumes and lying all over each other (I call this particular picture "the manpile" - note the lone neglected girl at the top left, who isn't squished at all.) (Or look at this, which is supposedly a HOSTAGE SITUATION.)

The hero of part 5 is Giorno Giovanna, the half-Japanese son of....Dio. Yes, apparently Dio got around in the time of part 3 and somehow impregnated women without killing them (even the author's like, 'I don't know HOW that could happen, so please just pretend it did.' But if you think about it, the body in question is actually Jonathan Joestar's, so GioGio is sort of the mpreg baby of Jonathan and Dio. Yep.) This arc basically chronicles Giorno (GioGio) and his quest to become the most powerful gangster in Italy - a Gang Star, if you will. *groan* He's aided by four other fabulously-dressed guys with Stands, all named after Italian foods. Actually, in this arc, they're all named after food, like the villains Risotto Nero and Ciocolatta. And so there's about a dozen volumes of fighting enemy Stand-using gangsters while finding a way to the boss of their syndicate. In theory, the plot is about protecting the boss's daughter from all the people trying to kill her.

But still? Ridiculous. The young idiots waste their time arguing over things like vegetarianism and teaching each other basic math, and sometimes they're just plain bizarre, such as when they're torturing information out of an enemy stand user. One of them zips the enemy's head right off his body with a Stand, and they turn his disembodied head towards the sun, prop open his eyelids, and put on his glasses to magnify the sunlight into his eyes. Then they turn on the boombox and start breakdancing around him until he breaks and spills the information.

Also, this arc is most likely to spawn late-night discussions as to which Backstreet Boy each character corresponds to.

01. Metro - Criminal World [ lyrics ]
Illegal activities and homosexuality! That's this arc in a nutshell! :D
02. T Rex - Telegram Sam [ lyrics ]
03. Gary Glitter - Do You Wanna Touch Me [ lyrics ]
04. Pet Shop Boys - Flamboyant [ lyrics ]
05. The Ramones - Pinhead [ lyrics ]
06. Gorillaz - Dirty Harry [ lyrics ]
All of these are songs for the skanky young men of the "Passione" gang: Bruno Buccellati, Giorno Giovanna, Guido Mista, Narancia Ghirga, Fugo Pannacotta, and Leone Abbacchio.
07. Broken Social Scene - Anthems for a 17-year-old Girl [ lyrics ]
Poor Trish Una! Surrounded by all these hot boys dedicated to protecting her...and NONE OF THEM WANT TO DO HER!
08. The Cure - 10:15 Saturday Night [ lyrics ]
The Passione gang's job is to safely transport Trish to her father, the reclusive leader of their syndicate. All you see of him is a shape huddled under a coat by a phone, muttering about Trish. (I had fun misinterpreting the lyrics to this song, hee hee)
09. Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal [ lyrics ]
But Trish does get attacked and almost killed! Oh noes!
10. Butthole Surfers - Shame of Life [ lyrics ]
The Passione gang decides to betray their syndicate and go on the run, mostly because they love their leader Bruno SO MUCH.
11. Green Day - She [ lyrics ]
Trish decides that she's tired of her man-harem protecting her and starts kicking ass with her own newly-discovered Stand. They still are completely uninterested in her feminine charms, though.
12. REM - Crazy [ lyrics ]
Ah, Vinegar Doppio! The syndicate boss, Diavolo, sends his advisor Doppio after Passione. Doppio is several crayons short of a full box, let's just say.
13. Roots Manuva - Chin High [ lyrics ]
14. The Rolling Stones - Jig-saw Puzzle [ lyrics ]
There's a lot of introspective nonsense in the middle about loyalties and what their priorities in life are and their morals and stuff.
15. Subtle - Long Voice (remixed by Mike Patton) [ the lyrics of the original, non-remixed song ]
Diavolo's stand, King Crimson, is another hella cool stand (if only its powers made logical sense). Fighting it is completely surreal, and even more so in the final battle.
16. Nino Rota - Speak To Me Only With Thine Eyes (The Godfather Theme)
Well, I don't think it's a spoiler that GioGio really does become a Gang Star, eh?

[[ ZIP OF PART FIVE (63 MB) ]]

PROS:
Set in America! With a female JoJo!
Lots of women, for once, but of course they're all gay for the current JoJo, which makes this kind of like one of those lesbian prison movies.
Araki's idea of a straight man is a crossdressing serial killer who is in love with Jolyne and wants to marry her. It's sort of hilarious.
It's still homoerotic, even with only about three men around.
Everyone's wearing lipstick now, men and women alike! (Possibly a con?)
The return of the PimpHat! This time it's a furry one with horns, worn by Weather Report.
Jotaro evidently has a wrinkled, hideous portrait hanging in his attic somewhere. Look at him! (What, I like Jotaro, I think that's a plus orz)

CONS:
God, Jotaro, you asshat! What a terrible father you are! XD No wonder she wants to punch you!
Oh my god, so Dio pretty much canonically had sex with a teenage altar boy. That's not quite right. (They were lying about a hotel room and Dio's half-naked and his pants are falling off. Also said altar boy can knot cherry stems with his tongue, AND DEMONSTRATES.)
The ending is KIND of random (again, pulling superpowered Stands out of his ass when he gets bored with the powers of the current ones)

Part 6 (Stone Ocean) is set in 2011 on an island prison off the coast of Florida. Jotaro's (slightly-delinquent) 18-year-old daughter, Jolyne Kujo, was framed for a murder by her boyfriend and sent to the island prison Stone Ocean for 15 years. Jotaro apparently has been a shitty father and always dashing around the world to take care of one thing or another, and he doesn't even show up for this. But he sends a strange pendant to his daughter in prison, and when she accidentally scratches her finger on its sharp edge, she develops the power to summon a Stand, Stone Free.

When Jotaro FINALLY shows up to rescue her (and is perplexed that his daughter isn't jumping for joy to see him, the dumbass) he gets attacked by the stand Whitesnake on the way out of the prison, which can extract both a person's soul and their Stand power out of their head in the form of CDs. Jotaro is able to get Jolyne out of the prison before going into a coma, but Jolyne, who is now sorry that she'd been mad at her father (although she's quite justified) voluntarily lets herself be re-captured so that she can hunt down Whitesnake and get daddy's soul and stand back.

Part 6's art continues along the trend of "twisty, detailed, and kind of homoerotic," and even Jotaro, who is supposedly 41 or 42 years old, looks younger and prettier than he did in part 3, when he was 18. (Snakeskin pants?!) This arc involves fighting enemy Stand users in prison and, well, the ending sort of opens up the way to part 7, where the mangaka just said, "fuck it, I want to do an AU of part 1!"

01. Basement Jaxx - Romeo [ lyrics ]
Besides being a fun song about a chick who isn't going to put up with nonsense, the boyfriend who framed Jolyne was conveniently named Romeo.
02. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - No No No [ lyrics ]
03. Le Tigre - Deceptacon [ lyrics ]
Jolyne adjusts to (lesbian) prison life, meeting people such as Hermes and Guess on the way (he started naming people after fashion designers too now. Yep.)
04. Siouxsie and the Banshees - Sick Child [ lyrics ]
Half of this arc is Jolyne working out her father-issues involving Jotaro. He was never there and has been kind of an uncommunicative ass to her, but she still craves his attention and love, which is kind of pathetic to watch. So when he finally shows up to visit her in prison, she's torn between the urge to kick his ass and grovel for his affection.
05. Fugazi - Margin Walker [ lyrics ]
However, an assassination attempt interrupts this charming family drama.
06. Martina Topley-Bird - Too Tough To Die [ lyrics ]
Er...Jotaro's one tough mofo. Really.
07. G. Love & Special Sauce - Cold Beverage [ lyrics ]
By POPULAR DEMAND, here's a song for the female inmate F.F. (Foo Fighters), who is actually plankton in a human form and therefore is always sucking down some kind of drink in an attempt to stay hydrated. I told you, this manga is weird.
08. The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist [ lyrics ]
I guess Araki couldn't keep from drawing sexy men for an entire arc, so apparently this female prison has a men's wing, including the charming serial killer Annasui.
09. David Bowie - Cactus [ lyrics ]
Annasui, rather inexplicably, has decided that he loves Jolyne and wants to marry her. (She doesn't get it either; he basically introduces himself that way before using his stand power to rip one of her enemies to pieces. Her reaction is, "wait, who are you again?")
10. The Distillers - Drain the Blood [ lyrics ]
Jolyne and her group of freaky convicts are still searching for the user of Whitesnake, who has Daddy's soul and Star Platinum disks.
11. Queen - Get Down Make Love [ lyrics ]
It's really funny to see Annasui chase after Jolyne proclaiming his love for her, and Jolyne being either confused or totally missing whatever he just said. Serial killers in love! It's hilarious! (Annasui is in jail for rather spectatularly murdering his cheating girlfriend. Errrr...)
12. Fletch - Driving Daddy Home
13. Berlin - The Metro [ lyrics ]
Some psychic nonsense in the middle of the arc allows Jolyne to realize that yes, although Jotaro is an uncommunicative jackass who assumes everyone can read his mind and tell that he cares, well...he does care! (I still DENY that there is ANYTHING UN-KOSHER ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP, DAMN YOU ALL.)
14. Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence [ lyrics ]
Of course, they get the disks sent off and Jotaro is able to appear in the nick of time to save Jolyne's life, and all is apparently well in the world again.
15. Eurythmics - Beethoven (I Love To Listen To) [ lyrics ]
It helps if you've seen the video for this song back in the early 80s; it has a perfect housewife just lose it one day and start cold-bloodedly smashing up her model home. Anyways, Jolyne administers a beatdown.
16. Buck-Tick - Kimi ga shin...dara [ lyrics ]
Trust me, the ending of this arc is totally surreal and fits in with the lyrics of this song. O_o;
17. Eels - old shit/new shit [ lyrics ]
o/~I'm tired of the old shit, let the new shit begin. o/~

[[ ZIP OF PART SIX (66 MB) ]]

PROS:
Hilarious. Seriously, the plot has reached new levels of fun.
And the art's reached new levels of awesome.
Also, since it's an AU, you can play "spot the cameo"!
...there's a stand that can turn people into dinosaurs.
Also, you find out that Dio Brando is a caffiene fiend. GIVE THE MAN SOME COFFEE.
I have never seen such a skanky, attractive Zeppeli before. orz
Apparently Araki thinks that people with disabilities can and should be incredibly skanky and homoerotic too.

CONS:
I'm a little afraid for Gyro; Zeppelis usually have the average lifespan of a lemming if a Joestar is involved.

Part 7 (Steel Ball Run) is set in America in 1890. A businessman sponsors a cross- country horse race with a $50 million prize, and thousands of people show up to participate. One of these (the hero???) is a truly strange Italian named Gyro Zeppeli who has a solid gold grill that says "GO! GO! ZEPPELI!" He carries two steel balls in holsters as his weapons, and he seems to be able to make them spin and fly as he wishes (a form of hamon, maybe?) At registration he meets the ex-jockey Johnny Joestar, who had become paralyzed from the waist down after being shot in the spine. Johnny is wheelchair-bound, but when he touches Gyro's spinning balls (Jeez, one day I will be able to talk about this series without giggling like a seventh-grader XD) the rotational force somehow propels him out of his wheelchair and into a standing position, something he's never been able to do since his accident. Gyro brushes this event off, but Johnny becomes determined to chase down Gyro during the race and learn the secret of his balls.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Okay, anyways, this arc, being an AU, has tons of cameos by characters from other arcs, most notably the rogue British jockey Diego "Dio" Brando! There are Stands in this arc too, but they're caused by people having...pieces of a saint's corpse...or...well, Johnny Joestar has the saint's arm hidden inside his own, and it gives him the ability to spin his fingernails and toenails and shoot them at people. (...) This is kind of like a buddy roadtrip story, and it really has two equally interesting protagonists, not a hero and a sidekick.

01. Bon Jovi - Wanted Dead or Alive [ lyrics ]
Now we've switched to Ultra Jump, so Araki can draw his weird gay cowboys in peace! Gyro Zeppeli just gets skankier and skankier and skankier. D:
02. David Bowie - I'm Afraid of Americans [ lyrics ]
Ha, before Johnny became a paraplegic, he was an arrogant asshole. He got shot in the back because he cut in line in front of an unbalanced otaku.
03. Cheap Trick - He's a Whore [ lyrics ]
Diego Brando, freaky genius jockey, came from poor beginnings but became wealthy when he married an 87-year-old heiress who mysteriously died less than a year later. Heh heh.
04. Radiohead - I Might Be Wrong [ lyrics ]
05. Scott H. Biram - Whiskey
06. Soda and His Million Piece Band - Cabbagetown Breakdown
So they're all racing through the Southwest, getting attacked by dinosaurs and stand users and searching for the missing pieces of a saint's corpse (which will give you stand powers). Johnny gets an arm, and Gyro and Dio get an eyeball apiece. Quick, on to the next stage! The race is still on!

[[ ZIP OF PART SEVEN (29 MB) ]]

OMAKE:
The Beatles - Get Back [ lyrics ]
Well, this song is where Araki got the name "JoJo" from. Yes, really.
Beauty and the Beast - Gaston
o/~ For there's no one as burly and brawny~ As you see I've got biceps to spare o/~
Barnes & Barnes - Fish Heads [ lyrics ]
This was inspired by a conversation about how Stands were the perfect date for a lonely boy, much like...fish heads.
Atom and his Package - Hats off To Halford [ lyrics ]
o/~ I have yet to see the proof so far that your sexuality determines the way you play guitar~ o/~
Backstreet Boys - Everybody (Backstreet's Back)
Seriously, part 5 is the boyband arc. orz
Raffi - Bananaphone [ lyrics ]
For Vinegar Doppio, the boy who uses toys, frogs, and ice cream cones as phones.
Doppio: Brrrrrrrrrrrring, brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring bring~~~
Doppio: Hey, you over there! Why aren't you answering the phone? Gimme that, you dumb bitch!
Girls: EEEEEK!!!
Doppio: Hello hello hello~? Yes, Doppio speaking~
Willie Nelson - Cowboys are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other) [ lyrics ]
I...I have no excuse. orz

OKAY I'M DONE NOW. *pant, pant* I apologize for the length, but this was one hell of an assignment and I tried to do it justice because I do love the series. If you are INTERESTED IN READING IT, HERE ARE YOUR CHOICES:

1) BUY THE OFFICIAL RELEASE OF PART THREE. There are three volumes out so far, and I've found them all shortly after release in my local Barnes & Noble.
2) If you are interested in the later arcs, which I'm not sure will be released in the US, here are scanslations for parts 4-6 and for parts 1-2. But please, actually buy the official release of Part 3 or they'll never finish it and I WILL HAVE TO CHOKE SOMEONE.

If you download...um...I dunno, just say something so I feel like I didn't do all this in vain. D: Especially if you already like JoJo! Say something, dammit! :D

[anime] [Oniisama E] Oniisama e...: The Lesbian Melodrama FST

jokersama — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 05:01:01 GMT

Requested by kurozukin_a!

In general, I'm not much of a fan of shoujo, especially relationship-centric shoujo. I don't like love triangles or contrived breakups or destined love or any of that, which effectively rules out most of the plot devices of those series. D: However, I do have several guilty pleasure series, and one of these is the classic Oniisama e (Brother, Dear Brother) by Ikeda Riyoko.

Ikeda Riyoko is sort of the queen of old-school shoujo; she wrote Rose of Versailles, so all your stereotypes about 70s shoujo with long curly hair and big sparkly eyes and long skinny legs probably come from her (and it was the first manga to be translated into English, apparently). Oniisama e was her second series, a 3-volume series written in the 1970s and adapted into a 39-episode anime series in 1991. Basically, it's the story about the first year at a private high school for an average girl named Misonoo Nanako. She's a nice, unassuming girl who has studied hard to gain admission to the prestigious all-girls Seiran Academy, and she documents her life in numerous letters to her old cram-school teacher, the "Dear Brother" of the title, asking him for advice and reassurance as she tries to figure out how to survive adolescence.

(I can't help but imagine poor Takehiko's face as he reads some of these letters. "Holy shit! N, no, this is my little-sister-figure, must not find this hot, must not find this hot...")

Nanako has never tried to stand out much, and doesn't even consider trying to get into the school's super-elite Sorority, which consists of all the most beautiful and talented girls of the school who get special treatment and have special parties and, well...it's a super-idealized sorority with an on-grounds Sorority House. However, she finds herself unexpectedly and bewilderingly nominated for membership into the Sorority (of COURSE), and she finds herself tugged about by the bizarre dramas and fears and general nonsense that a school of anxious, status-conscious teenage girls will inevitably produce.

Nanako finds herself somehow dragged into by the strange drama going on between the three most beautiful and idolized girls in the school; the princess-like Sorority leader Ichinomiya Fukiko ("Miya-sama"), the androgynously beautiful and INCREDIBLY WANGSTY tortured artist Asaka Rei ("Hana no Saint-Just"), and the boyishly strong and athletic and forthright Orihara Kaoru ("Kaoru-no-Kimi"). I went to a public high school, but my mother went to a private Catholic girl's school and she tells me that it was not uncommon for younger girls to develop a "strong admiration and worship" for the cool older girls, almost like a crush, but "it was NOT anything like THAT." Well, assuming my mother's CORRECT, which I'm not entirely SURE OF, Nanako develops a massive unrequited crush for Saint-Just-sama, probably because she's like a tall beautiful boy that smells good and quotes French poetry and chugs handfuls of pills when she gets upset. However, Saint-Juste has some kind of desperate love for the cruel Miya-sama, who seems to delight in emotionally torturing Saint-Just just to prove the extent of her power over the other girl. Nanako tries her hardest to help her beloved Saint-Just, but as the normally kind Kaoru-no-Kimi cynically tells her, you can't really understand what another person is going through, so sometimes there's no way you can help. Saint-Just seems to barely notice Nanako most of the time, except to tease her and say that she reminds her of a doll she has.

This is SUCH a total soap opera of a show; it's really intense and melodramatic and sucks you in despite yourself. It's not really for a younger shoujo audience, but I thought that despite its melodrama (near-rape, suicide attempts, fatal diseases, general bodice-ripping), it really handled a lot of truths about adolescence in a honest and realistic fashion that I could recognize from my own high school years that were NOT in a lesbian crockpot like Seiran Academy. High school and adolescence really are tough on most if not all girls, and I think that once you settle back with some popcorn, most people will really enjoy Oniisama e.

(If you're curious, you can get fansubs or DVD-Rs from the TechnoGirls - I know, how old-school!)

(image shamefully filched from Oniisama E.... ~Caro fratello...~)

[ ZIP OF ALL SONGS (83 MB) ]

01. Saint-Etienne - La Poupee Qui Fait Non (The Doll Who Says No) [ lyrics ]
A translated cover of a French pop classic by Michel Polnareff. You can't really narrow down this song to any particular girl in the series, but you get the idea. :D

02. Interpol - Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down [ lyrics ]
Nanako runs into a beautiful long-haired "boy" in a suit on the bus, and is amazed by the older girl's beauty and really rather masculine mannerisms. She instantly develops a massive, painful, unrequited crush on "Hana-no-Saint-Just," who was nicknamed after a figure from the French Revolution who was beautiful and cold and sort of fixated on death and who died young. (He actually responsible for the guillotining of many people, but he was beautiful and died young, which apparently excuses a lot of faults. >_> )

03. Legowelt - Strange Girl
As soon as Nanako enters school (wearing the wrong thing, of course), she's practically accosted by a beautiful, sort of frighteningly intense girl in her class named Shinobu Mariko. Mariko pretty much latches onto Nanako and declares that they're going to be BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, OMG, and sort of elbows her way into Nanako's life in the sort of off-putting yet harmless way that people with really poor social skills do. Nanako just accepts this as best as she can, and goes along with Mariko's obsessing about being accepted into the Sorority. But Mariko, dude, you have to realize that attempted rape is a poor tactic for keeping friends. Really. I know you're sorry, but you freak people out when you do that.

04. Ween - Baby Bitch [ lyrics ]
Nanako respects the head of the Sorority, the queenly "Miya-sama," but she is really weirded out by the interaction between Miya-sama and Saint-Just-sama. She's seen Miya-sama deliberately stab Saint-Just with sharp objects and Saint-Just not mind...JUST SO LONG AS MIYA-SAMA WILL BIND THE WOUND. (Which Miya-sama won't do, of course.) Nanako has no idea what's going on but wonders what on earth would make someone who is otherwise so kind and gracious be deliberately sadistic to Saint-Just-sama, and why Saint-Just keeps crawling back like a kicked dog.

05. Bloc Party - Compliments [ lyrics ]
Saint-Just is a "bad ~~boy~~girl" and often skips class to sit and smoke in the clock tower, occasionally joined by her best friend, the basketball star "Kaoru-no-Kimi." Saint-Just is constantly scarfing handfuls of pills, especially when Miya-sama is cruel to her, and Kaoru-no-Kimi keeps telling her to cut that shit out and get over the bitch. It's like The Fortress of Solitude, except...not. Kaoru-no-Kimi even crawls into Saint-Just's bed naked to keep her warm and to let her cry on her shoulder. It's platonic, I swear. (I think?)

06. Depeche Mode - Black Celebration [ lyrics ]
Nanako finally seems to attract Saint-Just's attention, but who knows, it's probably just to entertain herself. The series is pretty honest about how people can be unintentionally cruel, especially as teenagers.

07. Hootie & the Blowfish - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want [ lyrics ]
Before you start screaming (or not), give it a listen; the lead singer's voice really does suit the song, ahahahaha.

08. Juliana Hatfield - My Sister [ lyrics ]
Sisters can be weird, but, uh, usually not this weird.

09. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Breaking The Girl [ lyrics ]
So Saint-Just gets Nanako to skip school with her, and then Nanako confesses her love and gets pretty much...nothing in return. Oh dear.

10. Filter and Crystal Method - Trip Like I Do [ lyrics ]
I'm not sure why Nanako is so obsessed with poor nutty Saint-Just; at one point Saint-Just is so whacked out on her psych meds she tries to kill Nanako, thinking it's Miya-sama and they can do a sexy double-suicide together "like she promised." Um...

11. PJ Harvey - Down By The Water [ lyrics ]
What's nice about the series is that all the characters, even the bullies and bitches, get their time to have a backstory, so even if you don't FORGIVE their actions, you at least UNDERSTAND them (to some extent.) Eventually you learn about the (completely ridiculous) reason that Miya-sama has been so kind to Nanako and so mean to Saint-Just, but I'll say it again since the girls of this series don't seem to understand: LESBIAN RAPE IS NOT A VIABLE OPTION FOR INTERACTING WITH NANAKO, JEEZ.

12. Soundtrack of Our Lives - Sister Surround [ lyrics ]
13. Rolling Stones - Play With Fire [ lyrics ]
Eventually Saint-Just, with the help of Kaoru-no-Kimi and Nanako, sort of makes a stand against Miya-sama's bitchy actions. Even though she still loves her, she won't let Miya-sama continue to get her way in everything, because she can't stand to see her beloved Miya-sama degrade herself like this.

14. Barenaked Ladies - Tonight is the Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel / Hidden Sun (m4a) [ lyrics for first part / lyrics for second part]
I really really apologize for the lone .m4a. m(_ _)m Spoilery McSpoiler, spoilers otherwise?

15. Billie Holiday - Speak Low (Bent Remix) [ lyrics ]
Nanako goes on with her daily routine, but everything seems unreal. But, in real life, even if you're upset you still have to keep going.

16. Magnet - Everything's Perfect [ lyrics ]
Kaoru-no-Kimi, who generally could be counted on to be the big-brotherly voice of calm and reason in the midst of the stupid melodrama, all of a sudden decides to go nuts and have her own emo woe arc. She's prone to collapsing with chest pains in the middle of strenuous exercise, and because of this, um, she can't be with the guy she loves. Because. Yeah.

17. Snap Ant - Saviour Piece
But the man she loves is like, "Are you crazy? I don't care about your tragic illness!"

18. Stone Temple Pilots - Sour Girl [ lyrics ]
The series ends with Nanako as a senior in high school, older, still cheerful, but with many things from her first year that she still can't discuss with anyone. But she'll be okay, because she's decided to learn from it instead of going nuts like all the other girls did.

It's the best thing to marathon when you're in the mood for ridiculously intense soap-opera hijinks and throwing popcorn at the TV.

[anime] Key The Metal Idol: Ja Tvoi Sluga, Ja Tvoi Rabotnik

jokersama — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:08:43 GMT

Key The Metal Idol is a fabulous 15-episode show made in the mid-90s when they were still making shows without alchemists and vampires. In fact, the theme of that era was robots and how they related to humanity, and this was (I think) the best of the lot. It's kind of a modern-day Pinocchio story, and it has some really excellent direction and design. Even the five seconds of seemingly-random footage that they show before the opening credits of each episode is carefully picked and gives you a foreshadowing of the events to come (without actually giving anything away). I also really like how it tries to make you figure things out on your own without spoonfeedng you everyone's motivations and reactions and so on. Every episode is named after a programming command, like GOTO.

And no, I promise that it's nothing like that wankfest Evangelion.

[[ ZIP OF ALL SONGS: 50 MB ]]

01. Kraftwerk - The Robots [ lyrics ]
Heh heh, an easy choice. In the Japan of the (not so distant?) future, the military is researching ways to use only-slightly-larger-than-life robots (controlled by humans) instead of human soldiers. The problems are that (1) the control center where the human controller is wired up is still about the size of a van and therefore conspicuous and hard to transport, (2) the controllers need to have almost inhuman strength of will, otherwise the metal monstrosities won't move (3) the robots have a bad habit of going berserk and killing all bystanders. Well, that's product development for you! The Ajo Corporation is selling their robot warriors to the Japanese military and sort of...glossing over these facts in their sales demo. They figure that they can fix those little problems if only they could get the renegade scientist Dr. Mima to actually work on it. But the old man, for some reason, refuses to use his skills to build weapons.

02. The Stranglers - Strange Little Girl [ lyrics ]
A very peculiar girl named Tokiko Mima lives with her grandfather in a small village in the mountains. Ever since she was a child, Tokiko - or "Key" - has insisted that she is a robot built by her doll-maker grandfather, and she cannot eat or sleep like humans do. She's very pale with wild hair and a unnervingly unblinking gaze. In a flashback to her childhood, she tried to drink water from a fountain with all the other kids, and immediately passed out. When she woke up, her grandfather, Dr. Mima, told her that he had replaced her worn-out robot body with a new, slightly larger one, and would keep doing that every time her gears broke down.
Key hears that her grandfather has mysteriously died, and hurries to his side in a panic. Besides the fact that she is now alone in the world, Key's robot body will wear down without her brilliant grandfather to repair it. Her grandfather had left a dying message for her on a tape recorder - it tells her to go to Tokyo and make 30,000 friends before her body fails her, and then she can become a human.
"omgwtf?" is Key's reaction,( except with a lot less emotion).

03. Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence [ lyrics ]
So Key goes to Tokyo alone, and finds it to be a very strange and confusing place for innocent robo-loli girls. She gets picked up by a skanky producer who is looking for an underage girl to star in his new AV (Adult Video); when Key asks if it will make her 30,000 friends, he promises her even MORE - if it'll sell well. She asks if being a robot is a problem, and he says no; does she have visible jointing? >3

04. Bjork - Human Behaviour [ lyrics ]
Luckily for Key's innocence, her introduction to the world of Japanese fetish porn is interrupted by the arrival of pizza. The pizza girl is named Sakura Kuriyagawa, an old classmate of Key's from high school who moved to Tokyo. Sakura sizes up the situation, grabs Key's hand, and dashes out into the night, chased by the irate producer and his bouncer. Sakura scolds Key for getting into such a situation, and then offers to let Key stay at her apartment while Key does her 30,000 friend thing. Sakura is working about four jobs at once to make ends meet; she's cheerful and nice but really reaching the end of her rope.

05. Aksent - Kylie
At one of Sakura's jobs (the video store clerk one), Key watches videos playing over the store TVs. The president of a pop singer's fanclub, Shuichi Tataki, comes in with some promo videos of his singer's upcoming tour for Sakura to play, which she does because she has major wood for tha handsome Shuichi. Sadly, Shuichi is a classic otaku who spends his evenings renting kung-fu movies and chatting on teh intarweb about his singing goddess Miho Utsuse. At any rate, Key is fascinated by these concert videos and has the brainwave that if she becomes a singer, she could make 30,000 "friends" that way. Unfortunately for her, this robo-loli girl can't dance, can't sing, and seems to spend her time being picked up by (deliberately) creepy older men who offer to be her talent scout...or who are trying to take her apart to find out the secrets of her grandfather's craft. It's really not a heartwarming show at all.

(p.s. this song makes me crack up every time I hear it; it's about the singer's undying passion for Kylie Minogue...her music's great and all, but he'd really just like to hit that like a quarter pounder with cheese. XD)

06. Fatboy Slim - Sunset (Bird of Prey) [ lyrics ]
Key goes about her idol-singing debut nonsense. Becoming an idol singer is a weird process in Japan, it seems, as you've perhaps seen in things like Perfect Blue. The more you find out about the famous idol singer Miho, the stranger things become; she's also related to the Ajo Corporation and was pretty mediocre until recently when she became amazingly talented and compelling. Key weirds out Shuichi so much that he uses one of his free tickets to Miho's concert to take her, and of course Key manages to cause chaos. A cult leader catches sight of Key and decides that she's his new Messiah. (This is a weird show, but every giggle is sort of tempered by the feeling that something really weird is going on.)

(This song samples a poem of Jim Morrison's; I always thought the mixture of dead singer + modern music to be really unsettling somehow.)

07. Gary Numan - Are 'Friends' Electric? [ lyrics ]
In the meanwhile, the Ajo corporation goons are hunting for Key (the last working perfect robot that Dr. Mima made, and presumably holding the secret to perfectly-controlled human-sized robots...or is that really why they're after her?). They send their huge human robots out through the streets, dressed in tan trench coats, with hats pulled low and shades on to hide their metallic faces. But I don't think anyone would be fooled by the way their weight cracks cement with each step. But whenever they get too close to Key, they go haywire, clutch at their heads, and collapse.

08. Einsturzende Neubauten - Blume (Japanese Version) [ lyrics ]
Miho has to take an indefinite sick leave after the events of her concert, and a new girl is groomed as her replacement. Unfortunately for Beniko, she finds out the truth behind Miho's success. She's young and thinks she's immortal, so she is still willing to take that risk to be successful.

09. Groove Armada - Superstylin' [ lyrics ]
Key goes to another concert, and this time she stands up and sings a single note, causing everything to go nuts as usual.

10. Wedding Present - Red Shoes By The Drugstore [ lyrics ]
Sakura, who has been on the sidelines trying to protect Key without being too jealous of her success, gives something to Key.

11. Lamb - What Sound [ lyrics ]
At the verrrry end of the series, Key sings at a concert. The song, which is supposedly HER BIG SONG, is kind of boring. So instead, have this one!

I swear to god I would not recommend crappy, wanky robot shows to you, or shows about cute dancing idol singer angels! If you like weird fairy tales, or mysteries, or just stories about weird, lonely people doing strange things, please check it out. m(_ _)m Key The Metal Idol is available on three DVDs; you can usually get them mucho cheap on half.com and so on. See, look! $30 for the entire series!

LINKS: This is a good reference page for the series, and if you want a look at the actual series art, try the official page. And finally, here's a much more coherent review of the series.

EDIT: RENT IT FROM NETFLIX

[game] [Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner 2] A Cat Is Placed In A Sealed Box...

jokersama — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 04:52:40 GMT

(art by calintz. Wave at the nice kitty!)

[[ FULL ZIP (82 MB) ]]

So in the Playstation 2 game Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner you play Serph, the leader of bunch of merry freaks who live in a dark, rainy world shooting at the other freaks for a chance to leave the "Junkyard" and reach "Nirvana," which is supposed to be a paradise. But one day a girl appeared in the Junkyard and was taken into your tribe's custody; she's lost her memory and is named ~~Mary Sue~~ Sera. When she arrives, another bad thing happens: everyone in the entire Junkyard gets a strange tattoo on their body somewhere, and turn into demons with the insatiable urge to devour everything in sight, friend and enemy alike. The only thing that can keep our party's demonic natures under control is Mary Sue's singing.

Anyways, the Karma Temple, which is where everyone had heard about "Nirvana" from, says that whoever brings Mary Sue to them will be allowed to reach Nirvana, so your party eventually makes its way to the top of the Karma Temple and, in a way, reach Nirvana. And then it's time for the second game. (If you really want to know more about the first game, the FST I made for the first game is a little more serious and coherent, at least description-wise.)

01. David Bowie - Five Years [ lyrics ]
They discover that Nirvana isn't quite what they'd expected.

02. Siouxsie and the Banshees - Black Sun [ lyrics ]
A black sun shines over a ruined earth, where humans live in ghettos under special domes, and going out in the sunlight means death...unless you're a demon.

03. Roni Size - Visiting Angels
So they head into the ghettos, because Mary Sue is missing and so is one of their party members.

04. David Gahan - Bottle Living [ lyrics ]
05. Tricky - Ponderosa [ lyrics ]
Roald/Roland, a hard-drinking slacker, offers to help them find Mary Sue, and conveniently happens to sport a tattoo that allows him to become a demon as well.

06. Sneaker Pimps - Bloodsport [ lyrics ]
And of course, there is a retarded love triangle between Serph, Mary Sue, and Serph's second-in-command Heat. Or so we're supposed to believe. Serph doesn't seem to care one way or another, and Heat - Heat, what the hell is wrong with you?

07. Nine Inch Nails - Memorabilia [ (most of) the lyrics ]
And of course, Mary Sue's memories turned out to be crucially important as well! Who would have thought?

08. Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary [ lyrics ]
Interestingly, the second game is really centered around Gale, the formerly deadpan and emotionless strategist in the party. One of the things you find out is that the fate of the world hinges on his sex life!

09. Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again [ lyrics ]
Oh noes! A betrayal! And Serph doesn't seem mad or surprised about it at all!

10. Goldfrapp - Lovely Head [ lyrics ]
11. The Beatles - Cry Baby Cry [ lyrics ]
12. The Cure - I'm Cold [ lyrics ]
So, in an extended flashback sequence, you learn that Mary Sue was once in love with a completely two-faced manipulative jerk and she reacted badly to finding out that he wasn't such a nice guy after all.

13. Low - Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me [ lyrics ]
The events of EGG 2, where Serph and Heat have a serious talk in private.

14. Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face [ lyrics ]
And Gale resolves his complicated romantic life, finally.

15. Songs:Ohia - Farewell Transmission [ lyrics ]
Cielo actually does something cool! (Sorry, I'm about the only person who didn't get madly attached to him. I don't instantly like the wacky comic-relief characters. TT)

16. Nina Simone - Ne me quitte pas (If you leave me) [ lyrics ] [ translation ]
And Serph and Mary Sue have a touching moment, I guess, all by themselves.

17. Madonna - Bedtime Story [ lyrics ]
A new character is introduced near the end of the game, who is great partially for the WTF-factor and the way they must confuse Heat. >D

18. Utah Saints - Three Simple Words
Let me tell you a story about the ending FMV. I beat the final boss and the phone rang, and it was my mother. She was trying to talk to me about her day and I was trying to make the right noises and watch the ending movie at the same time, because I couldn't pause it and I couldn't tell my mother to be quiet, I'm trying to play a video game. XD; At any rate, my impression is that the ending was full of philosophical nonsense, as is usual for a Megaten game. But the philosophy isn't so bad after all, I guess.

C&C welcome! Otherwise, um, tell me your least favorite love triangle. >_>

[game] Fatal Frame/Project Zero 3: Nara Black

jokersama — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 08:41:25 GMT

Weeeeell, I did the other two games and I'm replaying the third now so what the heck. My next chance would probably be next October anyways.

Project Zero 3: The Call of the Tattoo (or Fatal Frame 3: The Tormented) is, obviously, the third game in the Fatal Frame series of survival horror games. As you may or may not know, these games use the old superstition that taking a photograph of someone steals a bit of their soul, and then throws in a bit of stuff about spirit photography. You're basically forced you to roam through haunted Japanese mansions at night armed only with a camera, photographing ghosts. It's extra-scary because the nature of the weapon forces you to stand there as the ghost RUSHES YOU and to wait until the very last second to take a good, clear, centered photograph to do the most damage; wildly shooting away like any other game will just waste film and get you killed.

The third game is the story of Rei Kurosawa, a photographer who lost her fiance Yuu a few months ago in a car accident caused by her own careless driving. Since then she's been sort of living in a daze, unwilling to move on and of course blaming herself like crazy for the accident. She hasn't even told some of her fiance's friends that he's dead, so letters addressed to her fiance still arrive at their house. Luckily for her, she's living ~~in sin~~ with her barely-legal assistant, Miku Hinasaki (the heroine from the first game) who does her laundry and cooks for her and all that, so Rei can afford to spend all day sleeping if she so desires.

However, even emo girls have to work, and Rei accepts a job photographing an old abandoned mansion out in the countryside. She goes to the ruined house during the day, with Miku in tow (which is ususually sensible for these survival-horror types), but while photographing an empty hallway, the flash seems to reveal her fiance standing in the shadows. Whoever it is, he turns around and shuffles around the corner, and she hurries after him. She finds herself in a weird dreamlike world, standing outside a darkened Japanese mansion on a snowy night. She goes inside and hears ghosts whispering; at one point one even attacks her and she has to run like crazy to get away from it, since she has nothing to defend herself with. She sees Yuu's shadow in front of her, leading her to a altar room; she also sees the shadow of a mother and child and a hysterical woman running through the house screaming. As soon as she enters the altar room, she finds herself in a hall with tattered curtains obscuring her view; something is moving towards her through the curtains, but she can't see who or what it is. She catches a glimpse of a half-naked woman with long dark hair and blue tattoos all over her body, and as the ghost lunges towards her she wakes up with a start, and she's back in the abandoned house, staring at the empty hallway. Miku comes to check on her, asks her if she's all right, and looks a bit nervous when Rei says it was nothing.

That night, when Rei sleeps, she dreams that she's standing in the snow outside the mansion again. Inside she finds the hysterical woman huddled in a corner, muttering insanely to herself. Rei tries to talk to her, but the woman starts screaming and looking over Rei's shoulder, where the tattooed miko is coming after them. A matching tattoo is spreading all over the hysterical woman's body, and Rei decides that discretion is the better part of valor and starts running, with the nekkid tattooed miko running right after her, trying to grab her. Rei almost makes it out of the door when the miko's blue corpselike hand just brushes the back of her shoulder. Rei suddenly finds herself on the floor in a white yukata, with the four child mikos holding down her arms and legs. A blue tattoo of snakes and vines is spreading all over her own body, and as it reaches her face, the four mikos drive stakes through her wrists and ankles. Rei wakes up in her room, shrieking and clutching at her shoulder, which looks blue and bruised. Miku comes in to check on her, but the bruise is gone and Rei says she just had a nightmare.

After that night, Rei finds herself sleeping more and more, visiting the mysterious mansion called "The House of Sleep" every time, and when she wakes she feels the invisible tattoo spreading over her entire body...

[ ZIP OF ALL TRACKS (89 MB) ]

01. The Cure - Charlotte Sometimes [ lyrics ] [ about the band ]
I will always have a Cure song and a Boards of Canada song on these FF FSTs, it seems. Anyways, this song was too apt to pass up.

02. Mekon - Please Stay (Röyksopp remix) [ lyrics ] [ about the artist ]
Rei is still desperately missing Yuu; she can't even bring herself to enter his room or put away his belongings. Look, honey, it's your own fault for dating a folklorist. They have a shorter lifespan than your average lemming in the Fatal Frame universe.

03. John Vanderslice - They Won't Let Me Run, Pt. 2 [ about the artist ] [ he gives away his music on his website, btw ]
One of the things you'll notice about the protagonists is that their idea of running is "shuffling just barely fast enough to evade the screaming hordes chasing them." Seriously, it's like a catch-that-elevator jog.

04. Death in June - Little Blue Butterfly [ lyrics ] [ about the band ]
People in the real world who dream of the House of Sleep spend more and more time sleeping until they've lapsed into a coma. If the miko touched them, the blue tattoo spreads over their body, and if she catches them in the dream, their sleeping bodies are reduced to a pile of black ashes.

05. Johnny Hollow - Gone [ lyrics ]
Even though Rei knows that those who enter the House of Sleep chasing their dead loved ones never return, she can't stop herself; she has to see Yuu one more time.

06. Siouxsie & the Banshees - Rawhead and Bloodybones [ lyrics ] [ what?! ]
Your usual pleasant assortment of ghosts live in the House of Sleep, such as the mother and child who accuse you of killing their husband/father, the woman who combed her hair until it ripped out of her head, those dudes chasing you with axes...they're usually all, "MORE PAIN, MORE BLOOD, MORE SACRIFICES!!11"

07. John Vanderslice - Behold a Pale Horse [ what? -- horses? ]

08. Calla - Monument [ lyrics ]
Fatal Frame 3 has three playable characters. One of these is Yuu's friend Kei Amakura, who has been writing Yuu without knowing that the poor sap's dead. (Rei reads these letters, of course.) Kei's twin nieces Mio and Mayu got up to some supernatural shenanigans in Fatal Frame 2, and one died and the other has now sunk into a coma after moping about feeling guilty that her sister died. Kei's investigating his niece's coma, and has begun to dream of the House of Sleep too. Unfortunately for him, he's about as psychic as a brick and has to hide from all the ghosts, and every ghost, including the naked tattooed miko, seems to think that they want to break themselves off a piece of that manbiscuit. BAD TOUCHES! BAD TOUCHES!

09. The Sherbets - Luwanda

10. Kate Bush - Watching You Without Me [ lyrics ]
With both Rei and Miku spending most of their day asleep dreaming of the House of Sleep, their waking hours at home are strange indeed. They wander about in a dazed, almost zombie-like state, fixated on the people they've lost instead of living their own lives.

11. Björk - Desired Constellation [ lyrics ]

12. Siouxsie & the Banshees - Shooting Sun [ lyrics ]

13. Depeche Mode - Damaged People [ lyrics ]
I am totally not insinuating anything about the relationship between Rei and Miku. They're just two good friends who like to snuggle in their nighties. But Miku has made her choice and Rei cannot stop her; Kei arrives at Rei's house in time to see the results.

14. Boards of Canada - The Beach at Redpoint
The tattoo has spread to Rei's neck; when it reaches her face, the tattooed priestess will come for her.

15. Wire - Heartbeat [ lyrics ]
Kei spends a night on Rei's couch and tries in his own dorky way to save the day.

16. Closterkeller - Czas komety (The Reign of the Comet) [ an approximate english translation ]
The final boss battle is so beautiful and dreamlike; it's like fighting underwater against something out of your worst nightmares.

17. Utah Saints - Lost Vagueness [ lyrics ]
That girl Rei sure has a way with corpses, doesn't she? Makes me wonder what she does on the weekends.

18. Nina Simone - Little Girl Blue [ Postal Service Remix ] [ lyrics ]
So what will Rei do now if she can't use her dead boyfriend as an excuse anymore? Well...she'll probably figure something out.

Comments, complaints, whatever are welcome. That babbling text over the cover comes from here so you might as well c/p something random if you do decide to comment. :D

EDIT 01/29/06: Indiv tracks taken down, but the zip still works!

[anime] Gilgamesh FST

jokersama — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 05:41:19 GMT

Things that go bump in the night, eh?

Does sci-fi horror count?

Gilgamesh is an anime based (rather loosely) on a manga by Ishinomori Shoutaro, who's famous for series such as Kamen Rider and Cyborg 009. Of course, both manga and anime draw upon the world's oldest written story, the Epic of Gilgamesh. This epic tells about a demigod king, Gilgamesh, who had many amazing adventures with his sidekick Enkidu; they killed monsters, battled the gods themselves, built the ancient city of Uruk, and, after Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh traveled beyond the ends of the earth in search of immortality. Although upon casual glance this manga/anime doesn't follow the plot of the epic very closely, there are more parallels than you'd think.

Ishinomori's story is very dark, though; I'd classify it as sci-fi horror, with a lot of the horror centered around bioengineering and cloning, as well as the despicable things people do on their own. Paired with Ishinomori's distinctive, old-fashioned art style, the manga was sort of like reading a gothic horror novel about Speed Racer, you know? XD For the anime, they picked a character designer who'd worked on some horror titles, and the resulting art is pale, dark, kind of bizarre, even downright ugly sometimes, which matches the story very well. (Although some of it can be pretty; these covers have some artwork from the DVD covers.)

The story starts sometime in the middle of the twenty-first century, where a massive research project called Heaven's Gate is going on in the Middle East in the ruins of Uruk. One of the head researchers, a man named Madoka Terumichi, has submitted a report to the project leaders, and whatever he said was enough to prompt the immediate discontinuation of the multi-billion-dollar research project of Heaven's Gate. To the surprise of his fellow researchers, Madoka Terumichi shortly thereafter went into the restricted area of the research facility and set something off that destroyed the entire facility and set an electromagnetic pulse over the entire world, covering it with a strange cloud that came to be called Sheltering Sky. This terrorist act wiped out communications worldwide, and for a decade the world tore itself apart in war, ending up with a decimated population living in pre-industrial conditions. Since it happened on October 10th, the event was known as Twin X.

Madoka Terumichi (円　輝道) became known as "Enkidu" (which happens to be the on- reading or alternate reading of the kanji of his name.)

Fifteen years later, his two children Kiyoko (17) and Tatsuya (14) live on the run from the yakuza. Their mother is dead and their father hasn't been seen since the day of Twin X. They seem to live in the various abandoned houses scattered all over since the terrorist incident; the cities themselves seem mostly abandoned. On a rainy night they hide in a mansion which apparently had been part of a bioresearch facility. In that house they find three other people also taking shelter from the rain; they're three nice young men wearing bizarre black formfitting uniforms (they look like they escaped from a visual kei band, quite frankly). Upon hearing that the two children are on the run from the yakuza, the three men offer to let them live with them, where there are "many others like them." However, at that time, the yakuza finds the house and is banging at the front door. The three young men excuse themselves, and Tatsuya and Kiyoko wait nervously. All of a sudden there's a pulse of power that blows out the candles and shatters a mirror, and the three men are seated where they had been just seconds ago, saying that the yakuza was gone now (as in, lying in pieces in the road).

More than a little creeped out now, Kiyoko and Tatsuya try to find an excuse to leave, but apparently there are even more newcomers waiting outside the mansion; three "devil children" with strange powers that the young men say are out to get Kiyoko and Tatsuya. The young men may be monsters, but if Tatsuya and Kiyoko have to choose between devils and monsters, whose side can they really safely pick?

Gilgamesh is very strange and very dark; it's not for children. It's also one of the few shows where I honestly could not predict what would happen next or how the story would end - and not because of poor plotting, because upon rewatching there had been subtle hints all along. If you like creepy, disturbing sci-fi with an actual plot, this is well worth getting. Classical music is also an integral part of the story; Beethoven's Emperor Concerto is a recurring theme, and Kiyoko has perfect pitch and carries a tuning fork.

[ THE ZIP (116 MB)]

01. Daft Punk - Steam Machine
The ruined world after Twin X, where the hallucinatory Sheltering Sky shimmers over abandoned cities.

02. XTC - Runaways [ lyrics ]
Tatsuya and Kiyoko apparently have been on the run together for most of their lives after their mother drank herself to death. She'd warned them that there would be people who would hate them for their terrorist father.

03. Spalding Rockwell - Vicious
The three nice young men of the group "Gilgamesh" - Novem, Sex, and Octo.

04. Cocteau Twins - Serpentskirt (featuring Faye Wong) [ lyrics ]
n. [Native American Mythology] "serpentskirt" is the English translation of the Aztec word Coatlicue. Coatlicue, also referred to as Teteoinnan and Toci, is the Aztec earth goddess, symbol of the earth as creator and destroyer, mother of the gods and men. The idea she embodies is powerfully concretized in her statue (Museo National de Antropologia, Mexico City) - her face is of two fanged serpents; her skirt is of interwoven snakes (snakes symbolize fertility); her breasts are flabby (she nourished men and gods); her necklace is of hands, hearts and a skull; her fingers and toes are claws (she feeds on men, as the earth consumes all that dies).
The two children are taken in by the mysterious Countess of Werdenberg, a beautiful, cold woman who is not above manipulating and using people to get her way. Let's just call her this series's Ishtar, shall we?

05. Auf der Maur - Lightning Is My Girl [ lyrics ]

06. Black Box Recorder - Child Psychology [ lyrics ]
The Countess has raised three foster children with strange powers; she calls their little group Orga, and their mission is to destroy Gilgamesh, as Gilgamesh is controlled by Enkidu. Despite their strange powers, the three children are friendly and willing to show Tatsuya how their powers work; there's Fuuko, the slightly flirtatious girl, Fujisaki, the calm, cool older-brother type, and Tooru, the child of the group. I guess "Lightning is my girl" is for Fuuko and "Child Psychology" is for Fujisaki; I couldn't think of a good one for poor Tooru. Ahahaha sorry!

07. The Sparrow - The Only Way Out
Kiyoko practices the hotel piano (she loves to play and had always wanted to be a piano tuner) until one day when she plays Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, which for some reason drives the Countess into a bitchy rage. Shortly afterwards, Kiyoko leaves Orga to live on her own without her brother.

08. Zombie Nation featuring My Robot Friend - The Cut
In their frequent clashes with Gilgamesh, a new force is brought in by outside parties to fight Gilgamesh; this is the Blattaria army, a frightening insectoid clone army which wields spears and tears apart their prey without hesitation.

09. Vitalic - Poney Pt. 1
The Countess takes Orga to visit her grandfather, the Chairman. It's a strange, creepy home with a blind girl and pomegranates growing on the trees.

10. Autopoesis - Seasidewaltz
The October Project, the attempt to dispel Sheltering Sky, is being guarded from Gilgamesh by a civilian military group headed by a frightening man named Kazamatsuri. Kazamatsuri controls the Blattaria army as well as several other bizarre cloning projects.

11. B-Movie - Nowhere Girl [ lyrics ]
Tatsuya goes to visit his sister in her small apartment on the outskirts of the city. She tells him that she's been supporting herself tuning pianos, but the Countess knows better.

12. Roots Manuva - A Haunting
The more that they find out about Twin X, Enkidu, and the past, the more muddled things become.

13. David Bowie - Hallo Spaceboy [ lyrics ]

14. The Moon Seven Times - My Game

15. Art of Noise - Moments in Love
Kiyoko takes in a stray, even though she really should know better.

16. Röyksopp - Dead To The World [ lyrics ]
The city is decimated by another massive fight between Orga, Blattaria, and Gilgamesh, and Tatsuya rescues his sister from her apartment.

17. Storm - Lokk [ lyrics and translation ]

18. Front 242 - Crushed [ lyrics ]
There's two flashbacks to Twin X from the perspective of two different people who were there.

19. The Legendary Pink Dots - Disturbance [ lyrics ]
The final showdown between Orga, Blattaria, and Gilgamesh, in which Gilgamesh's puppetmasters show up in person.

20. Bent - The Everlasting Blink
L'extrémité.

If you're interested in buying the series, it's being put out by ADV (hey, they have at least two volumes out so far!) Comment if you download if you like - you can, um, list your favorite classical myth, that's the ticket.

[anime] Sailor Moon; The Outer Senshi: Although I Do Not Hope To Turn Again

jokersama — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 17:53:07 GMT

So, yesterday I was minding my own business when a friend called me over to marathon Sailor Moon S. There's nothing like a group of people in their mid-twenties watching shows for 8-year-old girls, is there? I last saw Sailor Moon S a long time ago, on unsubbed VHS masters off of LD - so it was really nostalgic and very weird to be watching the DVD versions, where you could see all the fetish demons, panty shots, lesbian innuendo, and interminably long transformation sequences the way they were meant to be seen! (Although I think the VHS static somehow replicated the acid trip the creators were obviously on.) If you're of a certain age (and usually female), you can't deny having seen at least SOME Sailor Moon.

Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon is about a bunch of teenage girls who can transform into magical warriors to fight the forces of evil threatening the earth. Y'all know that. There's a sailor soldier for all of the planets of the solar system, and a bunch of minor ones for asteroids and moons and things. The outer planets of the solar system - Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto - have a particularly messed up group of girls as their representatives. They're all older than the other girls - they are COOL OLDER WOMEN at the age of 16-18 - and inspire lustful admiration (Haruka), wistful envy (Michiru), polite unease (Setsuna), or alternating love and terror (Hotaru) in the five Inner senshi.

Fan opinion is sharply divided over whether these four are the best thing since sliced bread or evil traitorous bitches who are meaaaaaaaan to the poor little inner senshi.

I personally think that neuroses add charm to a girl's character! :D

[ FULL ZIP HERE ]

SAILOR URANUS, TEN'OU HARUKA ( 天王　はるか) (the soldier of the earth and wind)
The tall, boyish, slightly arrogant one who loves to flirt with cute little girls. The inners have to keep reminding each other that they aren't lesbians. No, seriously. Hell, I'd hit that.
The Creatures - Fury Eyes [ lyrics ] [ about the band ]
T. Raumschmiere - A Very Loud Lullaby [ about the artist ]

SAILOR NEPTUNE, KAIOU MICHIRU ( 海王　みちる) (the soldier of the oceans)
The beautiful, refined princessly girl who can play the violin while bouncing a lemon on it, swim incredibly well, and paint goofy new age watercolors of dolphins leaping through space. I just can't get myself to like this condescending wench.
The Creatures - Seven Tears [ lyrics ]
Outside - To Forgive But Not Forget [ about the artist ]

SAILOR PLUTO, MEIOU SETSUNA (冥王　せつな) (the soldier of time)
The mysterious, reserved older woman who only appears to give cryptic statements and stop time for plot purposes. When I played the Sailor Moon fighting game, I took great pleasure in breaking Chibi-Usa's back over her knee. SHINING WIZARD, SMALL LADY!!1
The Creatures - Pluto Drive [ lyrics ]
Modest Mouse - The Cold Part [ lyrics ] [ about the band ]

SAILOR SATURN, TOMOE HOTARU (土萌　ほたる) (the soldier of death and rebirth)
She's a sickly girl (half-cyborg in the manga) who has the power to heal, but also has two equally destructive alternate personalities battling it out inside her - one good, and one evil. I find her fun because she has multiple personalities and sometimes tries to choke a bitch.
The Creatures - Exterminating Angel [ lyrics ]
Curve - Doppelgänger [ lyrics ] [ about the band ]

Comments? Questions? Links to good fic about these characters? (preferably not Haruka/Michiru waff; I can't get over the urge to slap Michiru long enough to suspend disbelief) You can also smack me for using a Creatures song for each of the characters, but they all fit! Sorry about that. ;;^^

(p.s. bonus dork points if you recognize the symbol I used in the background of the songlist)

[game] Killer 7 EP: May The Lord Smile...And The Devil Have Mercy

jokersama — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 03:37:34 GMT

Aha, a subject I can legitimately stick to eight songs with!

Killer 7 is a game recently released by Capcom. It takes place in 2003, which is a world in which world peace had been established once and for all in 1999. However, strange cultists/terrorists named the Heaven Smile began appearing and, using themselves as living bombs, killing the world leaders working for world peace. Unfortunately, as the Heaven Smile are invisible (except for their hair-raising laughter), only a few special people can see and kill them; namely the assassins who are known as the Killer 7.

The Killer 7 are seven assassins all with their own weapons, style, and special skills; they all have the last name "Smith" and are under the aegis of the wheelchair-bound Harman Smith. Actually, the Smiths are all different personalities of Harman Smith, accessible through different channels on the TV. They live off the blood of the Heaven Smile that they kill, and all are insane to a certain degree.

This game is hard to describe; it's almost mind-bogglingly weird. Its plot isn't even your typical "enemy threatens mankind, you go about shooting enemies, sub-bosses, and then the final boss to restore peace to humanity"; it has something to do with US-Japan relations after WWII and politics and Homeland Security, a pretty strange subject for a shooter game, even one as surreal as this. It also has some pretty disturbing psychology and stories. The game is rated M, and for once I do agree that this is a game intended for adults - not for the violence per se, but this is simply a story for adults. It would have weirded me out too much as a kid, I think! It's also a game with a lot of style; cel-shading and stylised art, the direction of the cutscenes, all of these are supposed to engage you as much as the actual plot or gameplay does.

People either love or hate the game, basically. When I heard that there was a game about MPD assassins who drink the blood of the invisible laughing cultists that they shoot, with a totally bizarre storyline, French bondage gimps, strange psychological situations, and an excessive number of references to The Smiths (no, the surname of the seven Smiths is not an accident; every memo you collect is named after an obscure early Smiths songs, and then you get stuff like this scrawled on the wall in blood as a clue) - well, I thought Capcom was performing strange experiments on me again.

[ In the name of Harman, THE FULL ZIP ]

01. HARMAN SMITH: Akira Yamaoka - 袋 (Sack)
[ about the artist ]
The leader of the Killer 7. He may look like an old man that requires the care of a nurse, but he possess the power of a "God-Killer," and once that power is awoken, he becomes unstoppable.

02. GARCIAN SMITH, LEADER of the SEVEN: The Sisters of Mercy - Never Land [A Fragment]
[ lyrics ] [ about the band ]
The Leader of 7 different personalities and also a loyal servant of Harman. He's low-key and nothing's ever humorous to him. Garcian is a cleaner; when his other personalities die, he's able to bring them back by recovering their dead bodies.

03. DAN SMITH, THE HELLION: Sherbets - 太陽の羊 (Ram of the Sun)
[ about the band ]
The most aggressive personality with the biggest attitude out of the 7. He's dressed cool with a suit and tie, but no one will mistake him for a businessman, at least not with the big revolver he carries all the time. There is hatred in his eyes. Some even say that if you stare into his eyes, you can see the devil.

04. MASK de SMITH, THE BABYFACE: Wall of Voodoo - Mexican Radio
[ lyrics ][ about the band ]
A mysterious former professional wrestler, he managed to build quite a following with his unique blend of Lucha Libre and British Lancashire style wrestling. There are rumors of his rampaging maskless through the ranks of the No Holds Barred circuit as well. Just when he had been invited to New York to appear at the main event, he vanished without a trace...

05. "BAREFOOT" KAEDE SMITH: Barry Adamson - Vermillion Kisses
[ lyrics ] [ about the artist ]
The only girl in the killer entourage. She summons her deadly spirits by blasting out a shower of blood from her wrist. Because she lives a life so close to death, her ability to survive life-or-death situations is beyond that of any living man...on a personal level she's very passive and tends to keep her distance from others.

06. CON SMITH, THE CHILD: mclusky - icarus smicarus
[ lyrics ] [ about the band ]
The blind boy Con has exeptional hearing that allows him to visualize sounds. Another nice attribute is his super running speed so that if he wanted, he could outrun almost any enemy. When he's asleep, he's just an average child. Nobody would suspect him of being an elite assassin.

07. COYOTE SMITH, THE THIEF: Kinky - Pos Que Se Vengan
[ about the band ]
Like a venomous serpent, he's a cold-blooded personality. A Latino thug who knows his way on the streets, Coyote is synonymous with the art of lock-picking. It's this extraordinary skill that qualifies him to be a member of the Smith Syndicate. Also worth mentioning is his ability to take lives brutally.

08. KEVIN SMITH, THE ENIGMA: Bent - Invisible Pedestrian
[ about the band ]
This albino man uses a knife as his weapon of choice. He can disappear into thin air by taking off his shades. He favors solitude over harmony. They say he's not a man of many words, but in actuality, no one has ever heard him speak. Some rumor that his voice can summon gods.

Zip is underneath the covers. Comment if you like, or ask what I thought of the controls, or maybe donate a buck to the Red Cross if you can. Enjoy the music, at least!

[movie] Dark City: Sleep. Now.

jokersama — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 22:24:05 GMT

I am just full of musical goodness today...er...okay, I just have a lot of free time on my hands, perhaps.

I just realized that both of my movie FSTs involve Jennifer Connelly as the heroine and Trevor Jones as the soundtrack composer. Whoa. My subconscious is trying to say something here.

Well, anyways, Dark City was a movie that was released in 1998 and apparently sank without a trace. Some reviewers loved it, such as Roger Ebert who has been trying to pimp the movie to people for years (and provided a DVD commentary track and some other stuff). Neil Gaiman wrote an essay on the movie which is contained in the DVD. Basically, it's one of those cool little movies that nobody saw (in the US, at least; I understand it was the second-top-grossing film in Australia for 1998).

The voiceover at the beginning of the film informs us that at one point "The Strangers" came from another solar system, changed their forms, and slipped into our world unnoticed.

In a dark city somewhere, a man wakes up in a bathtub, with blood on his forehead and a light wildly swinging from the ceiling. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. Frightened, he staggers out, gets dressed, and finds a dead woman in the bedroom with spirals carved into her naked body. Just as he makes this discovery, the phone rings and a man beathlessly gasps, "They're coming for you; you must leave now." Of course, our nameless hero does so with a quickness. He discovers, as he slinks through the old-fashioned, 1940's-style city, that there have been a string of prostitute murders and he's wanted for questioning. His name, according to his wallet, is John Murdoch.

In addition to eluding the police, he's being chased by strange people in black trenchcoats and black bowler hats; their skin is dead white and they are all bald, even the children. They have the power to reshape reality, which they call "tuning." When the clock strikes midnight, John watches the entire city stop in its tracks and warp and shift into entirely different forms. The Strangers move silently through the sleeping inhabitants, wiping their memories and injecting them with new ones, changing their surroundings and relationships with the greatest of ease. A couple can be in the middle of a fight in a ghetto, for example, and wake up as a upperclass couple in a mansion with three children, and never know the difference. The Strangers have great powers but they are still mortal, and in their quest to understand mortality and humanity, they're experimenting to find out if the "soul" is somehow linked with "memory". If a person has their memories completely changed, do they become a fundamentally different person?

To their great displeasure, one subject woke up while his memories were being changed, and, to make things worse, he appears to share their power to "tune" reality...you get my drift?

It's kind of sci-fi noir navel-gazing with some pretty slick CGI and some great actors. Jennifer Connelly plays John Murdoch's wife, Ian Richardson plays the head Stranger Mr. Book, and Richard O'Brien (that's Riff-Raff of Rocky Horror fame) plays Mr. Wall, the Stranger in charge of capturing Murdoch. Kiefer Sutherland plays Dr. Daniel Schreber, the lame, scarred human psychiatrist who is helping the Strangers in their experiments...and yet who was the man on the phone who warned Murdoch to escape from the room he awoke in.

Interestingly, the movie seems to be heavily based on the memoirs of a famous paranoid schizophrenic, Daniel Schreber. Freud saw him and wrote some pretty interesting things about him. The man's 1903 memoirs were entitled Memoirs of my Nervous Illness. The vast conspiracies, the city of neverending night, the memory-wiping and memory-swapping were part of the man's delusions. You can read the comparisons here if you're interested.

[ FULL ZIP OF ALL SONGS(70MB) ]

01. David Bowie - Shadow of Doubt
Wow, this seems lame so soon after the Labyrinth FST, but I swear I compiled this FST first! Murdoch wakes up in a dark room with a dead woman.

02. The Raveonettes - Beat City [lyrics] [about the band]
As Murdoch notes, "It's midnight again? When was it day? I've been awake for hours and hours..."

03. Orbital - The Girl With The Sun In Her Head [about the band]
Murdoch discovers quite by accident that he's married; his wife is a sad-looking torch singer in a local nightclub who seems to have a guilty conscience.

04. Chris Vrenna - Flying On The Wings of Steam (remix) [about the artist]
The sleeping city changes every night at midnight...

05. tweaker - Crude Sunlight [lyrics] [about the artist]
...and Murdoch can only watch.
Ha, I cheat; tweaker IS Chris Vrenna. Well, that's all right.

06. Squarepusher - Square Window [about the artist]
Murdoch meets his wife Emma in their darkened apartment, and discovers that they've been fighting and he's been staying in a hotel for the past three weeks...three weeks in which six prostitutes have been murdered. It's just a tiny detail. Let the making-up begin!

07. Iggy Pop - Nightclubbing [lyrics] [about the artist]
The Strangers move through the city like ghosts...

08. The Cure - Lullaby [lyrics] [about the band]
...observing their human experiments and manipulating them as they see fit. If they come across an awake human, they simply pass their hands over the person's eyes and tell them, "Sleep. Now."

09. The Velvet Underground & Nico - I'll Be Your Mirror [lyrics] [about the band]
Luckily for John, his wife stands by him and doesn't seem to mind that he's a possible serial killer and/or total headjob. That's love for you, folks.

10. Gary Numan - Warriors [lyrics] [about the artist]
One of The Strangers has "John Murdoch's" memories implanted in his own brain to learn how he thinks and where to search for him. Human memories, especially those of a psychopath, seem to severely unbalance the aliens.

11. Schneider TM - The Light 3000 [lyrics] [about the artist]
John is hiding at his "uncle's" home, trying to reconcile his childhood memories with the evidence that they never happened.

12. The Black Heart Procession - Sympathy Crime [lyrics] [about the band]
The Stranger with human memories visits Emma, as he too remembers that he has a wife.

13. Prodigyremixed.com - Action Radar (FakeID Mix) [lyrics] [the webpage]
John pulls himself together and has a battle of wills with The Strangers.

14. PJ Harvey - (Untitled)
John returns to Shell Beach, the scene of his childhood memories...

Comment if you download, whatever. Or maybe just make your favorite sound effect!

[movie] Labyrinth: A Clock Began To Strike

jokersama — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:52:29 GMT

I won't apologize for this one...much...except to say that I have another movie FST if this doesn't quite count.

Labyrinth is a fantasy movie that came out in 1986. The basic premise is that a whiny teenage girl (played by future Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly) wishes for her screaming infant brother to be taken away by goblins, and is rather shocked to find out that they do house calls. Jareth, the King of the Goblins (played by David Bowie), appears to her and tells her that if this bothers her so much, she has thirteen hours to solve the Labyrinth to reach his castle in the center, or else her little brother will become a goblin forever. She's then transported to the outer walls of a vast labyrinth, alone...

Anyways, as you're watching this, there's kind of a checklist:

David Bowie's awe-inspiring crotch

Creepy blue hands

Muppets that toss their heads about, play dice with their eyeballs, and want to decapitate Sarah

Thinly-veiled fart jokes

A constantly changing labyrinth

David Bowie's crotch

A talking vulture hat

Talking scenery

A masked ball where everyone is wearing monstrous masks

Multiple M.C. Escher references, including a room exactly patterned after Relativity

David Bowie's crotch

Lots of really goofy, terrible mid-80s Bowie music

Anyways, I rewatched the damn movie last weekend to introduce some friends to the power and horror of the Area (BTW, it really is that scary. It's not your childhood memories deceiving you.) Then certain people mocked me saying that since I lurve Bowie so much, I should do an all-Bowie FST for the movie. Technically, the OST is half Bowie music, but face it, it's pretty terrible, ~~Magic Pants~~ Magic Dance notwithstanding. So I, uh, did an all-Bowie FST for this movie. (I know, I'm not sure if this isn't against the point of FST, but take a listen anyways.)

If you're bored, you can read the novel here.

[ FULL ZIP (69 MB) ]

THE FULL ZIP IS UNDER THE COVERS.

01. David Bowie - Eight Line Poem [ lyrics] (Hunky Dory, 1971)
Sarah, prancing about the park pretending to be a princess in a fairytale. Jesus, woman, you're 15!

02. David Bowie - Sound + Vision [ lyrics ] (Low, 1977)
What we learn in the first few minutes of the movie is that she totally lives in a dreamworld; her room is filled with stuffed animals and knick-knacks, and, being a teenager, she acts like she's the heroine of her own tragic melodrama. ALAS, I HAVE TO BABYSIT. Man, when I was little, I was on Sarah's side, but now I wonder why her stepmother doesn't give her the fist of justice for being such a self-absorbed little teenager. XD

03. David Bowie - Aladdin Sane [lyrics] (Aladdin Sane, 1973) (say it out loud, obviously)
She foolishly makes a deal with the King of the Goblins, who has a British accent and wears very tight tights indeed.

04. David Bowie - Moss Garden [instrumental] ("Heroes", 1977)
The outer edges of the Labyrinth.

05. Tin Machine - Baby Universal [lyrics] (Tin Machine II, 1991)
TIME TO AMUSE THE BABY AND THE MUPPETS.

06. David Bowie - Fascination [lyrics] (Young Americans, 1975)
This being a fantasy story, the heroine and the villain have a quasi-antagonistic, quasi-romantic thing going on. For shame, Mr. Bowie. (But it's not exactly a nice attraction between the two, though.)

07. David Bowie - Nite Flights [lyrics] (Black Tie White Noise, 1993)
The middle part of the labyrinth and the oubliette.

08. David Bowie - The Supermen [lyrics] (Bowie at the Beeb, 1971)
Uh...the labyrinth really is a weird place filled with weird creatures....yeah.

09. David Bowie - Crystal Japan [instrumental] (Scary Monsters ( And Super Creeps), 1980)
Sarah eats a peach given to her by a goblin, showing her, uh, innocence and trusting nature and...complete idiocy.

10. David Bowie - Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) [lyrics] (Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), 1980)
Jareth's watching yooooooooooou....

11. David Bowie - Glass Spider [lyrics] (Never Let Me Down, 1987)
Entering the palace in the center of the Labyrinth...

12. David Bowie - Station To Station [lyrics] {Stationtostation, 1975)
...where Jareth is chilling in a room that defies the laws of geometry.

13. David Bowie - In The Heat Of The Morning [lyrics] (from the late 60s sometime)
Jareth offers her the world if she'll give up her quest. In a fabulous review that is unfortunately lost to me, the (male) reviewer commented that you can tell this is a fantasy because she turns him down. Every woman the reviewer knows would have flung herself on David Bowie and demanded to be married immediately in an Escher-inspired cathedral.

14. David Bowie - I Would Be Your Slave [lyrics] (heathen, 2002)
"Just fear me, love me, do as I say...and I will be your slave."

15. David Bowie - An Occasional Dream [lyrics] (Space Oddity, 1969)
So, like, the end of the movie, where she has learned to put away childish things for now...but isn't adverse to having a muppet rave in her bedroom every so often.

Comments? Bitching? "Dude, what the hell is wrong with you?" Go for it. If nothing else, just grab the music and drop me a line! OR you can post your favorite part of the movie if you've seen it!

[Videogame:RPG] Tales of Symphonia, Zelos Wilder Character FST

kaiousei — Mon, 09 May 2005 00:10:20 GMT

I've spent the past few weeks of my life dedicated to this FST.

This is my first FST and it was kind of exhausting seeing as I kept running into new things that I wanted to add to it. I thought I was done today until I decided to throw notes into the zip files. I'm tired and hungry and very proud of myself for finishing this... ^_^

And, because I forgot to put her in the thank-you's... Thank you so much, Selah, for hosting my FST!!!

Sorry they're so big. ^_^

Disc 1:

Disc 2:

I drew the last three myself. The one I had for the cover was absolutely awful. Aren't they craptastical?

I was actually running on a timeline for the FST, trying to go song-to-song through the stages he goes through throughout Tales of Symphonia. To create the desired effect, I assigned it to two Discs, and it came out to a total of 36 tracks.

The downloadable zip files will be at the bottom!

I hope no one minds how much soundtrack music I've used...

Heaven's Not Enough

Disc 1: The Downward Spiral

01: The Barenaked Ladies - It's Only Me
They say you'll never love another 'til you love yourself, well brother
I'm in love with everyone I see

02: Tenacious D - Wonderboy

03: MXPX - Responsibility
I'm young and I'd like to stay that way
'Cause getting older won't make everything okay

04: My Own Worst Enemy - Lit
Can we forget about the things I said when I was drunk?
I didn't mean to call you that

05: The Barenaked Ladies - Falling For the First Time
I'm so thrilled to finally be failing

06: The Odds - Someone Who is Cool
What other people wish for oozes from my every pore
I'm the coffee, not the sleep

07: MXPX - Chick Magnet

08: The Goo Goo Dolls - Sympathy
I was in love with the things I tried to make you believe I was

09: Luna Sea - Love Song

10: Rent - One Song Glory
Glory; from the pretty-boy frontman who wasted opprotunity

11: Suikoden II OST - A Prayer to my Mother

12: Yuki Kajiura - Aura
The sun is in your eyes - the sun is in your ears
But you can't see the sun, never in the darkness

13: Silent Hill 4 OST - Room of Angel
So dream in your only memory of me, my dearest mother

14: The Who - Behind Blue Eyes
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool

15: Jimmy Eat World - Hear You Me

16: The Seatbelts - Is It Real?
Set my mind for open sky, but couldn't fly
So sadly, what am I? What am I?

17: DE-SIRE - Healing Vision

18: Yanni - Keys to Imagination

19: Tales of Phantasia - Fighting of the Spirit (SSH Remix)

20: 2MB - Healing Vision ~Angelic Mix~

Zip file of Disc 1

Disc 2: Defying Gravity

21: Yoko Kanno - Friends

22: Yoko Kanno - Heaven's Not Enough
Heaven's not enough if when I'm there I don't remember you

23: The Seatbelts - No Reply
Like the perfect ending, it won't be too long
Before everything I've ruined has seen me gone

24: Our Lady Peace - 4am
I walked around my good intentions to find that there were none

25: Yasunori Mitsuda - Green Sleeves

26: Eric Clapton - Tears in Heaven
I must be strong and carry on
'Cause I know I don't belong here in heaven

27: The Goo Goo Dolls - Name
I think about you all the time, but I don't need the same

28: Frou Frou - Only Got One
If I, just to spite you, placate your disgrace
Will song turn to silence? Will mask wear your face?

29: Pink Floyd - Learning to Fly
A dream unthreatened by the morning light
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night

30: Dido - Don't Leave Home
Everything is clear, everything is new
So you won't be leaving, will you?

31: Collective Soul - The World I Know
And I laugh to myself while the tears roll down
'Cause it's the world I know

32: Gin Blossoms - Follow You Down
Anywhere you go, I'll follow you down
I'll follow you down, but not that far

33: Switchfoot - Meant to Live
Hoping that he's meant for more than arguements and failed attempts to fly

34: Staind - So Far Away
I'm so afraid of waking... Please don't shake me

35: Gackt - OASIS (Mars ver.)
Spread your wings and rise into the sky
Before you can be burned, become the sun
Blow, wind... let it guide you to the sky
Before all that is you is taken away

36: Wicked - Defying Gravity
Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity
And you can't pull me down.

FINALLY, the Zip file of Disc 2 is fixed... and perfect and good. Phew!

Bonus!

Hosted on yousendit.com, because I sucked up way too much of my hostee's space as is.

Zelos' Theme
Underground Passage. The sewer where Zelos gets out to his hunnies!
Zelos' Theme ~Serious Arrange~
Beat the Angel

Gawd, I hope I'm remembering everything...

11/07/05: Re-sited the links and everything's back online for a while - I can't say how long, but feel free to download as much as you want for now! Don't forget to leave comments!

19/09/05: Uploaded again! For good this time, I hope!

Hijikata/Okita of PMK

karabana — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 10:07:40 GMT

Hmm ... does this mean I can claim an FST now?

If it's not taken - and it doesn't *seem* to be, but I haven't scoured every single entry - I want to claim Hijikata/Okita from PMK.

If it's taken, more searching will ensue so I can find it. ^_^

Anime: Gankutsuou FST

jokersama — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 09:29:31 GMT

Gankutsuou (The King of the Cave) is a sci-fi story based heavily on Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. I vaguely remember reading that during high school, so the idea sounded interesting, at least. And then I saw the first episode, and my eyeballs exploded. Gankutsuou has a unique visual style; instead of solid colors, elaborate static patterns are used to fill in the artwork. Once your brain stabilizes, it's actually really fun to watch.

As for the story, it starts off about a third of the way into the novel. Two teenage aristocrats, Albert and Franz, are visiting a carnival on the Moon. While there, they hear rumors of the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo, a fabulously wealthy and reclusive gentleman who had arrived from the farthest depths of the Solar System. They catch sight of him at an opera, where the Count drops his watch conveniently so that Albert can pick it up. The next day, the Count invites the two boys to dinner in gratitude for finding his watch, and Albert is fascinated by this mysterious gentleman, even though his hands are as cold as death and he never eats while they're watching. (One of the rumors going around is that he's an alien or a vampire.) Albert, as it becomes increasingly clear, is painfully naive and good-hearted, and doesn't question the amazing coincidences that seem to pile up where the Count is involved.

The Count invites the two boys to watch a public execution with him, and the two become increasingly uncomfortable watching the pleading of the condemned and the shrieking crowd, the Count lays down three playing cards and tells Albert to choose one. The Count has one pardon, and the man whose name is on the card Albert picks will have his life spared. Franz, sensing that this is the sort of decision that an innocent person like Albert shouldn't have to make, tries to stop him, but the Count tells them that life and death are just a random game, since everyone will die eventually. Doesn't possessing the power to save someone's life make you like God, even for a minute?

Eventually, Albert's idol-worship of the Count prompts him to invite the Count to join him in Paris on Earth, where he can introduce the Count to all the fashionable circles. The Count feigns surprise and gratitude, but it's clear that he's been manipulating Albert evey step of the way towards this very end, and is already well-acquainted with Albert's parents and many of his friends. (He knows them, but nobody recognizes him, of course.) The Count's arrival on Earth throws Albert's peaceful, idle life into chaos, and the rest of the series is mostly a race to see if Albert will figure out that he's being used before the Count completely destroys him.

Anyways, so keeping all that in mind, here's the FST. The structure and feel of the anime and that of the original novel are slightly different, so the music I picked may or may not go with the original novel. But humor me, okay? Most of the music is very melancholy because, hell, this is a classic story of revenge and betrayal and lost love and all that good stuff. And when it's violent, it can even make me (a survival horror gamer and callous sort of wench in general) recoil. I'll just cover the amount of the story that I've seen so far, which is up to episode 19. The anime has made some creative adjustments to the plotline so I can't say exactly how it'll end.

No cover art; I never quite got the point of that. But here's one picture so you can see how seizure-inducing the colors and patterns can be at times:

The songs will stay up until I run out of bandwidth or the end of the month, whichever comes first. I'm doing some other FSTs so let's see how long this lasts! (Unlike my other FSTs, this should probably be played in the following order.)

EDIT 03/24: Files taken down; thanks so much for downloading and listening! I'm really glad I could introduce the series to you guys and that you all seemed to get out of the FST what I had intended you to get. :) If anyone wants it put back up, I can do that easily; just drop a comment.

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Requiem (Introitus) [ lyrics and translation ]
2. Beck - Lazy Flies [lyrics ]
3. Bent - Stay the Same
4. Tricky - Aftermath [lyrics ]
5. Laika - Girls Without Hands [lyrics ]
6. Suede - Everything Will Flow [lyrics ]
7. Brand New Idol - The Notorious Gentleman [ lyrics ]
8. UA - 記憶喪失 (Amnesia)
9. Eurythmics - Regrets [ lyrics ]
10. Joy Division - A Means To An End [ lyrics ]
11. Yoko Kanno - Shadow Of Doubt
12. Bjork - Where Is The Line [ lyrics ]
13. The Stranglers - Don't Bring Harry [ lyrics ]
14. The The - Uncertain Smile [ lyrics ]
15. Ministry - The Angel [ lyrics ]
16.Iggy Pop - Baby [ lyrics ]
17. Cat Power - Wild Is The Wind [ lyrics ]
18. Nick Drake - Cello Song [ lyrics ]

I'll just comment on a few of the songs. ;;^^ Lazy Flies struck me because of its combination of sci-fi and decaying, organic imagery. (Wow, that sounded really pretentious, but read the lyrics and you'll see what I mean.) The worlds of the rich and poor are contrasted in an early episode; the kids like to go to the edge of their lavish high-tech world and look down at the slums below. It reminds me a bit of Metropolis. Everything Will Flow has a similar feel, but that's really my pick for Eugenie.

Stay The Same I guess made me think of Albert; it's cheesy and synthy and romantic, and Albert is sort of a dumb puppy, so hey! Plus, there's the sentiment that people shouldn't change...

Girls Without Hands is for Haydee, the Count's slavegirl/mistress/pawn.

And for everyone's favorite foppish little psycho, Andrea Caval'canti, we have The Notorious Gentleman.

The middle part of the FST is when the paranoia and suspicion and revenge starts to creep in; the music reflects that. (Don't Bring Harry is probably about smack, as many of the Stranglers' songs were, but what the hell, why not.)

The last few songs deal with Albert's final disillusionment, at a pretty painful cost (as of episode 19, there is; it'll just get worse if it follows the novel.) But at least someone secretly likes him, and that's the deal with Uncertain Smile and The Angel. (I'm a saaaaaaap~)

And, since calintz requested this FST and she also insisted on this omake:

The Smurfs Theme - Happy Hardcore remix

Don't blame me! Blame her! It's not my fault that the Count is blue!

If you have a comment on the music or the series, I'd love to hear it. But if you just grab one or two songs, it's not a big deal. (But you should listen to it all~ trust me~)

{Request Month} (Anime)The Way of the Ninja: A Naruto FST.

dotiscute — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 07:27:45 GMT

Look, we'll pretend it's midnight here on Cali time.

jyuufish for her FST request demanded Naruto fight music along with image songs for the characters of her choice. Being a Naruto fan, I said ‘Hell yeh!’ and offered to throw in a complete FST for everything Naruto. She said yes and it was a done deal.

So here’s a basic summery of Naruto of those of you who’ve been either living under rocks for the past two years or haven’t been paying attention to all the tons of Naruto character centric pairings that popped out last month for the ‘rabu rabu’ theme.

Naruto hands down is Shounen (Boys) manga. It’s filled with diverse characters and special fighting technique, compelling antagonists and lovable protagonists and fight scenes that spawn out for months on end. All the wonderful things we love Shounen Manga for.

Info on Naruto can be found pretty much everywhere but here’s a brief run down. Once upon a time a ninja village was attacked by a demon nine tailed fox (We’ll just call it ‘kyuubi’ ) The fox was eventually defeated and sealed inside the body of a baby boy named Naruto.

There’s a lot to this manga, but in a nutshell it’s about an spunky outspoken young ninja and his quest to become the best ninja of his village, while along the way learning lots of important Shounen-manga-esque lessons about friendship, loyalty, never giving up, believing in yourself and of course, what it truly means to be strong.

My big problem with this FST was how to divide it up. Naruto in the tradition of any good Shounen manga, has a ton of side characters, some important to the plot, some just around for minor confrontations. I eventually realized that the easiest solution to this problem was to make songs not so much for the characters, but for the events that involve the characters.

Because trying to briefly sum up all the events of Naruto is about as effective as summing up all the events in Uncanny X-men (Or Dragonball Z to give an example to all the anime fans out there), most information regarding who is who and what does who with what will be mentioned in the notes.

For those of you not reading the manga, there are spoilers. But if you’re reading the manga, you got nothing to worry about so come on in and enjoy.

I tried pretty hard to keep the music around the same genre. Tracks here are mostly rock and alternative with some techno tossed in for the fights and a few other random things put in mostly for kicks.

01. Prologue Yo-Yo Ninja Boy - Less Then Jake lyrics
Ironically, this song was chosen for more then just it's title. It also the spunky, hyper feeling that is Naruto. Oh sure, I could have chosen some song to actually –fit- the prologue to Naruto. About a giant fox that attacked a ninja village, but you –know- you wanted to hear this song more.

02.Naruto Little Know it All - Iggy Pop/Sum 41 lyrics
Uzumaki Naruto is like most shounen protagonists. Loud, immature and lacking in talent with an unnatural love of Ramen. Yet filled with the determination to never give up, a mantra to get stronger and the loyalty and love of his comrades. I got an unnatural love myself of Iggy Pop, though this song lacks the usual psychedelic wooo freaky~-ness that Iggy Pop usually has, it makes up for it by being a good theme for Naruto in general.

03.Sasuke Play Dead - Bjork lyrics
Finding an angst song is easy. Finding an angst song for Sasuke that hasn’t been used already in one of the past FSTs is hard. Uchiha Sasuke is probably the second most important character in the series. A child prodigy, he’s put on the same team as Naruto and the two of them instantly become rivals. Unlike Naruto, who’s loud and brash, Sasuke is the exact opposite, skilled, dark, brooding and hell-bent on avenging the death of his clan.

04.Sakura Ariel- October Project Lyrics
The only girl on Naruto’s team, Haruno Sakura is a bright and book smart girl with near perfect chakra control. Yet unlike most ninjas Sakura’s main concern tends to be with winning Sasuke’s heart. Yet Sasuke rarely acknowledges her and Sakura finds herself falling further and future behind Sasuke and Naruto in terms of skill. More October Project for her. I love Sakura, but I’ll be damned if she doesn’t drive me crazy when she could be applying herself and kicking much ninja ass.

05.Kakashi Four Seasons in One Day - Crowded House lyrics
Hatake Kakashi, Naruto’s mysterious teacher with unquestionable talent, a flaky personally and a love of Erotica. He acts easy going and sarcastic, but in the tradition of Shounen it soon becomes clear that it’s all an act to cover up his painful and dark past. I’m way glad I’ve had this song for ages or else I would have been stuck on a song for Kakashi. For such a popular character, he’s too complex for his own damned good.

06. Team Seven I'll Make a Man Out of You - Mulan Lyrics
Naruto’s Team = HOPELESS. Or at least that’s what Kakashi concludes after the team’s first disastrous lesson. Oh, but of course he gives them another chance once he realizes that Sasuke, Sakura and Naruto will look out for each other no matter what. Everyone remembers this song right? Just picture all the Gennin running around trying to train while Kakashi reads his dirty novels in the background.

07. Zabuza and Haku Ava Adore - Smashing Pumpkins lyrics
The Bridge arc is the first major arc in Naruto and in it we meet Zabuza and Haku. Zabuza is a missing nin from Hidden Mist Village with a giant sword and a bad ass attitude. Haku is a young boy with beautiful girlish looks and deadly fighting skills. Together. They fight CRIME! Err.. no actually they’re comrades in arms, but there’s also a ton of psychological development on how Haku idolizes Zabuza, but Zabuza views Haku as nothing more then a tool to achieve his goals. However they seem to have a very odd if not a little twisted relationship that leads lots of fans to speculate. They’re a wonderfully tragic couple and probably my OTP of Naruto. When you pretend that Haku's a girl the lyrics work like a charm.

08. Naruto’s kyuubi. We’re in this together - NIN lyrics
We all knew that Naruto had the kyuubi inside him, but what we learn during his fight with Haku, is when Naruto gets emotionally over whelmed, he goes berserk with the kyuubi’s powers. Think ‘HULK SMASH PUNY NINJA!” only with a demon fox.

09. Rock Lee Texarkana - REM lyrics
It’s on to the Chuunin exams where the young ninja Genin are given the chance to up their status to Chuunin. (There’s three ranks, Genin, Chuunin and Jounin). On the way we meet Rock Lee. Lee, much like Naruto is an enthusiastic (if not far more dorkier) boy, who while lacking in talent, makes up for it with his own ambition and humongosly thick eyebrows. This gets to my obligatory REM track of the month.

10. Gai Born to Be Alive - Patrick Hernandez lyrics
Lee’s beloved Sensei Gai. Gai rocks. Like hands down. Words cannot describe the awsomeness that is Gai Sensei. Self proclaimed rival to Kakashi, and obvious Bruce Lee parody, Gai needed a song like this. I respect him too much to just choose a “Look out! It’s that wacky kooky Gai Sensei!” song, but I didn’t wanna over do it by choosing a song that bashed you in the head with it’s “Look at the DEEPNESS Of this character!”. So I choose a disco song. Because it was a bit of a wink wink nudge nudge at Gai, but it says something about his enthusiasm and positive attitude towards life.

11. Kabuto How To Disappear Completely - Radiohead lyrics
Because too many people had already put ‘Demons’ on their FST’s.
Kabuto is another one of those far too complex characters. He shows up at the beginning of the Chuunin exams as a dorky genin complete with dorky glasses and a dorky way of talking. But the big twist comes in as we learn (dun dun dun!) Kabuto is actually a dorky spy for a rival village! Oh, and he’s on par with Kakashi in terms of fighting, a skilled medic and a rather sadistic bastard when he wishes to be. Don’t you wish you were a super spy like Kabuto? I bet you do.

12. Orochimaru Nasty Habits - Oingo Boingo lyrics
Orochimaru is the central villain for Naruto. He’s pretty normal as evil villains come. First meet in the beginning of the Chuunin exams, he’s effeminate, brilliant, manipulative and the personification of a snake. This is a big of a stretch for Orochimaru in terms of what he does, but in terms of who he is, this song nails him, complete with his um.. odd fixation on Sasuke that will end up playing an integral part in our story.

13. Sakura blooms Life - Our Lady Peace lyrics
For Sakura’s first major “You Go Girl!” moment. Surrounded by Sound Ninjas and with Naruto, Sasuke and Lee down for the count, Sakura realizes that she needs to apply herself to save her friends who have fought so hard for her. She then proceeds to cut off her hair and use her wits and determination to be the useful character we’d all hoped she’d eventually be. (It doesn’t last too long, but it’s the thought that counts.) Ironically, I had no idea that Our Lady Peace would be a good call for this scene. I was listening to it for a few Naruto and Sasuke scenes I believe.

14. Sasuke and Orochimaru's Curse Seal La Bruja - Salma Hayek lyrics
If you’re not gonna pick up anything else on this fst, I’d totally recommend this track simply ‘cause it’s one of the more random things I’ve put in here deliberately to shake things up. It’s also the only track I have that’s not in English. Le gasp. But in a nutshell, it’s a lovely little song that sets up Orochimaru’s almost seductive-like hold over Sasuke with his curse seal that gives Sasuke amazing power, but at what cost? Dun dun dun!

15. Chuunin Preliminary Fights Mortal Kombat - Utah Saints
And so begins the start of ‘oldest call in the book yet it works’ fight music! After surviving giant snakes, pedophile ninjas, curse seals and each other, the Gennin finally make it to the preliminary exams. Only to learn that they might battle each other in one on one combat in order to make it to the next round. Round One! Fight!

16.Sakura vs. Ino Volcano Girls - Veruca Salt lyrics
Sense the early days of Naruto, Sakura and Ino have been established rivals over Sasuke’s (non-existent) love. However, they use to be close friends, with Ino bringing Sakura out of her shell and Sakura idolizing Ino. That is until Sasuke came along. Now they’re bitter rivals forced to battle each other. Funny how that worked out. Yay for angry girl songs!

16. Naruto vs. Kiba No Cigar - Milliencoln lyrics
Because I refused to do “Who Let the Dogs Out” or anything doggie centric for Naruto and Kiba’s fight. I just felt like it was time for another “I’m different and people try to bring me down but ha ha! I’ll never give up and embrace who I am!” song done ala’ Swedish punk.

17. Hinata vs. Neji Thursday’s Child - David Bowie lyrics
Hinata is the quiet girl from Naruto’s school who’s always carried the torch for him. Neji is her talented, yet bitter and cold cousin from the lesser branch of their clan. Taken from the old nursery rhyme “Thursday’s Child has far to go”, this song is meant to focus on Hinata who lacks self esteem and finds herself drawing her strength from Naruto’s encouragement as she battles her much stronger cousin. Besides, how can you say no to a David Bowie song?

18. Gaara vs. Lee Sand Storm - Darude
If you watched/read this fight and didn’t bawl your eyes out at the end, then you’re an awful awful person. Using a song with ‘Sand’ in the title is a bit of an old call for anything Gaara related, but it is a good song to put a fight scene too. Not to mention that Lee’s fight and inevitable defeat against Gaara and his deadly sand is hands down one of the best fights to come out of Naruto.

19. Jiraiya Tit Photographer’s Blues - Fabulous Poodles
The Chuunin exams take a quick brake as we are introduced to Jiraiya. A once legendary Ninja of Konoha turned writer of erotica. (you remember those books Kakashi was reading…. Oh yeh.) For Jiraiya I needed a song that said “I’m a dirty man, but not to the point where I’m creepy or anything too bad, but for the life of me, I can’t get laid.”. So while Jiraiya is a writer and not a photographer, it fit him nicely. (totally sorry, but for the life of me, I could not find lyrics)

20. Naruto vs. Neji To Hell We Ride The Lostprophets lyrics
The first fight of the Chuunin exams. Naruto vs. Neji. Neji is a skilled and talented, but he’s an arrogant bastard who believes that people are destined to either win or loose. Naruto lacks talent or skills but makes up for it with ambition and believes in himself. You've read every single shounen comic ever known to man, who do you think’s gonna win?

21. Shikamaru vs. Temari I’m only Sleeping - The Vines lyrics
Temari vs. Shikamaru who we already knew to be lazy, and if he wasn’t sleeping was probably complaining about how much of a hassle something was. Oh, but it turns out that Shikamaru is also a genius and brilliant tactician. That’s irony for you. I was gonna use the original Beatles version, but I decided it was best to stick with the ‘alternative rock’ side and used this cover instead, despite how similar they both sound.

22. The Invasion of The Leaf Conga Fury - Juno Reactor
Thanks to the team up of Sand and Sound, the leaf is invaided at the hight of the Chunin Exams. The Hokage has been kidnapped by ~~terrorists~~ Ninjas! Are You bad enough dudes to rescue the Hokage? Back to trance fight music fun thanks to the greatness that is Juno Reactor.

23. Gaara vs. Naruto Children - Robert Miles
Piano AND Trance! I can die happy! Naruto battles Gaara and as Gaara’s dark past is revealed (Did I mention everyone in Naruto has a dark traumatic past? ‘cause they do) Naruto is struck with the realization that they’re both opposite sides of the same coin.

24. Hokage’s funeral Fragile - Sting lyrics
Well, the day is finally saved, but not with out sacrifice. The Hokage was able to defeat Orochimaru but at the coast of his own life, once again proving the great responsibility that it means to be Hokage. I’m rather pleased with this song choice. It was either this or “You Lived Your Life! Like a Candle in the wiiiind~~~”, but I wanna think I’m above all that.

25.The Akatsuki Mack the Knife - Bobby Darin lyrics
We’re gonna take a quick brake from all the Alternative and Trance and the like for the arrival of Akatsuki, a mysterious group composed of extremely dangerous missing ninjas. This would include Hoshigaki Kisame a shark like ninja from the Village of Mist, and more importantly Uchiha Itachi, a prodigy of Hidden Leaf village who at the age of 13, killed his entire clan with the exception of his little brother Sasuke. Mack the Knife is an overly pleasant song about a blood thirsty gangster, so it tends to make me thing of Kisame, (for those of you with a basic understanding of Japanese, he has a very polite way of talking) but it works pretty well for anyone with the rice-picking hats and black and red cloaks.

26. Akatsuki vs. The Genin Burley Brawl - Juno Reactor vs. Don Davis
Because Naruto is aimed at young kids, the adult ninjas in the story tend to get over shadowed. Which is a shame ‘cause all the teachers totally rock. While rather short, Itachi and Kisame vs. Asuma, Kurenai, Kakashi and Gai is one of my favorite fights. All of the teachers (Except for Gai ‘cause he’s just that awesome) get their asses handed back to them curtsey of Itachi and Kisame, but the fearsome strength of the Mysterious Akatsuki has been established. More techno fight music ‘cause I know you’ve missed it.

27. Itachi and Sasuke. Cruel - Tori Amos lyrics
Time for the obligatory Tori Amos song! Sasuke confronts his older brother who murdered their family with the much expected disastrous results that you get when you’re a rookie ninja and you decided that taking on an S-rank criminal will go in your favor. I noticed a lot of the songs about Itachi tended to be very loud heavy death metal-esque pieces, which actually contrasts pretty badly against the effeminate and quiet individual that Itachi is.

28. Tsuande Loosing my Religion - Tori Amos lyrics
So I says to myself: "Hmm. Do I know any artists who tend to write songs that would fit a female character who’s suffered the death of her little brother, the betrayal of a teammate and the death of a boyfriend and a pretty bad gambling problem?" and I said "Do I ever!". I try to avoid using the same artists on the same FST for obvious reasons, but Tori Amos was a great choose for Tsunade and her cover of one of REM’s better known songs is far more appropriate for the mood in the original.

29. Sasuke vs. Naruto Chemicals Between Us - Bush lyrics
Tsunade returns to Leaf as the new Hokage and there is much rejoicing. Well. ‘cept for Sasuke who’s a little hung up on the fact that his brother kicked his ass a few chapters ago and that Naruto might just be stronger then he is. The two of them fight and while it’s interrupted, it lays down the stones for Sasuke’s critical decision to abandon his village for Orochimaru in hopes of being stronger.

30. Sakura’s dilemma Rinse - Vanessa Carlton lyrics
Sasuke makes his choice to leave for Orochimaru, brushing off anyone who tries to convince him other wise. Or in poor Sakura’s case knocking her out. The ideal "She thinks the world of him, and he dosn't care and it brakes her heart." song. Don’t worry honey, you can do better. Just look at Lee.

31. The Five Gennin Questions of Time - Depeche Mode lyrics
With a now Chuunin Shikamaru in the lead, Naruto, Kiba, Chouji and Neji head out to retrieve Sasuke,while battling the Sound Four along the way. I get a kick out of this song because half the time it sounds like it’s Naruto to Sasuke and the other half is Orochimaru to Sasuke.

32. Chouji’s fight Two Points for Honesty -Guster lyrics
One of my favorite Guster songs. I didn’t really respect Chouji simply 'cause he hadn't gotten enough character development to make him intresting. (omg guys! look! it's the fat kid! and he eats alot! Isn't that funny???) Then came his fight with Jirobou, and after that, I loved him enough that I felt that his fight deserved it’s own song. Chouji’s loyalty and trust in Shikamaru gives him the courage to fight and his last lines “Dad… I made lots of friends” is heartbreaking.

33. Kimimaro Medication - Garbage lyrics
Kimimaro. CLAMP Manga escapee complete with pretty boy looks, a love for his boss and attacks all named after flowers. For being someone so easy to mock, he’s still pretty tragic and his death is easy to see coming, but you can’t help but feel bad for someone who has no idea that everything he does for Orochimaru is all in vain.

34.The Return of Lee You’re the Best – Joe Esposito. lyrics
Yes. that song from that certain Karate movie. For Rock Lee’s triumphant and unexpected return. This is horribly corny. Even for Lee, but it totally fits him.

35. The Return of The Sand Full Throttle - Prodigy
For the return of the Sand Siblings. Which was albeit, unexpected as well, but not as triumphant (for me anyway) as Lee’s return was. Good music for the over all smack down that they give Sound.

36. Naruto vs. Sasuke. Again. Start Over - Abandoned Pools lyrics
After an entire friggin’ year of chasing Sasuke (Well, it was only a few days in the manga, but that was one far too long story arc) Naruto finally confronts and battles his former teammate, rival and friend. Blood, sweat, tears, chakra and subtext fly. And did any of you pick up the Abandoned Pools song the last time I put it on an FST? If you didn’t now’s your chance.

37. THE END (for now) Ninja Rap - Vanilla Ice lyrics
And thus wraps up the first part of Naruto. By guys! See you in three years and one piss poor and horribly contrived Kakashi-side story later! There’s no logic for this one. Only that I’d be an awful person for not including Ninja Rap. Go Ninja! Go Ninja! Go! Go Ninja! Go Ninja ! Go!

Like always comment if you download (and I know it’s gonna be a ton of you seeing as how popular Naruto is) and comments and critisism on the track choices are always appreciated. Special thanks goes to anyone who was able to help me out with this FST so that includes spacetart saturnoolaa cains_underoos dosetsuand of course trick_eyelids who not only hosted like always, but gave me a handful of good songs. With out them this FST would be far lammer.

Delay

zidane — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 06:33:01 GMT

I was planning on uploading my FST on yousendit tonight (it's still 10:30 pm for me), but in light of the recent update, I'll hold off on posting my ZoroxTashigi FST until I can find an alternate server.

Sorry about delays ^^;;

-H.